Neither is alone in their attitudes.
Hollywood is dividedand not for the first time.There have been seismic technological changes in the film industry before.
There was the transition from silent films to talkies, obviously; moviemaking transformed into an entirely different art.
Numerous old jobs were lost, and numerous new jobs were created.Later, there was the transition from film to digital projection, which may be an even tighter parallel.
It was a major disruption, with some companies and careers collapsing while others rose.
There were people saying, "Why do we even need this?" while others believed it was the only sane way forward.
Some audiences declared the quality worse, and others said it was better.
There were analysts arguing it could be stopped, while others insisted it was inevitable.IMAX's head of post production, Bruce Markoe, spoke briefly about that history at a press mixer before the festival.
"It was a little scary," he recalled.
"It was a big, fundamental change that we were going through."People ultimately embraced it, though.
"The motion picture and television industry has always been very technology-forward, and they've always used new technologies to advance the state of the art and improve the efficiencies," Markoe said.When asked whether he thinks the same thing will happen with generative AI tools, he said, "I think some filmmakers are going to embrace it faster than others." He pointed to AI tools' usefulness for pre-visualization as particularly valuable and noted some people are already using it that way, but it will take time for people to get comfortable with.And indeed, many, many filmmakers are still loudly skeptical.
"The concept of AI is great," The Mitchells vs.
the Machines director Mike Rianda said in a Wired interview.
"But in the hands of a corporation, it is like a buzzsaw that will destroy us all."Others are interested in the technology but are concerned that it's being brought into the industry too quickly, with insufficient planning and protections.
That includes Crafty Apes Senior VFX Supervisor Luke DiTomasso.
"How fast do we roll out AI technologies without really having an understanding of them?" he asked in an interview with Production Designers Collective.
"Theres a potential for AI to accelerate beyond what we might be comfortable with, so I do have some trepidation and am maybe not gung-ho about all aspects of it."