Major Hollywood studios have gone from banning generative AI outright to shunning visual effects vendors that lack an AI plan, according to Daniel Seah, CEO of “The Lord of the Rings” and “Avatar” VFX house Weta FX.
Seah spoke to press in Taipei on Friday, after Weta FX signed a partnership with the Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) at Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF). Weta’s clients, he said, are mainly the Big Four studios and the streaming platforms.
“We also got the memo from each of the studios, especially from their legal departments, saying that there is no such scenario that you can use any of GenAI for any of our work,” Seah said of early last year. By the middle of the year, several clients were allowing it, provided Weta got pre-approval and worked with only a small number of companies. Around the turn of the year, clients began asking about Weta’s AI strategy, mostly to find out how much money the technology could save.
“It’s, ‘If you don’t have an AI strategy, don’t bother to work with us,’” Seah said of the period since the third quarter of this year.
Seah said Weta has no intention of using AI to replace any of its artists or employees. “It’s more like to enhance and increase more workflow for us,” he said.
Weta chief technology officer Kimball Thurston said the company has been building its own AI models for modifying and recreating the world, “not necessarily the like ChatGPT-type of model.” Work with Moonshine is likely to focus on the artist layer – what the AI world calls the harness, “which I think is the worst name they could have chosen,” Thurston said. The goal is a tool that lets people refine their stories across “whole timelines of long-form content rather than just 20-second TikTok videos.”
Under the partnership, TAICCA and Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture will identify young talent and introduce them to Weta FX. Weta may offer them internships at its offices in Wellington, Melbourne and Vancouver. Seah said Weta recently announced it is likely to open a representative office in London too.
Weta has no footprint in Taiwan. Seah called the island the ideal base for exploring Asia. He pointed to flight times of three to four hours to Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea, government backing and a pool of engineers and storytellers. Thurston said Weta has also spoken to people in Thailand and Korea. He also pointed to a build-out of immersive experiences across Asia, possibly via Singapore.
“It’s more, to me, about market enablement than it is about any particular location,” Thurston said.
In the past year, Thurston said, Weta won a data center design award for the Southern Hemisphere. The award was for a cooling system that uses no water and is more power-efficient.
Weta VFX supervisor Sheldon Stopsack said the new tools have to fit into the studio’s existing pipeline, including its motion-capture work. “We want to be able to kind of shape the world the way the filmmaker envisioned it, we envisioned it, and, you know, have this creative control ultimately at the end of the day with any of these technologies,” Stopsack said.
