Generative AI imaging tools like Runway, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney have redefined what it means to be an artist in 2023. Some creators may be wary of artificial intelligence, but Los Angeles-based Lore Machine says its new platform can be a powerful ally for artists. Hollywood writers.
“We initially built a system for screenwriters to visualize their scripts, and that was definitely the first group that started signing up,” said Lore Machine founder Thobey Campion. decryption. “Living in LA, the most obvious use case for the Lore Machine was the Hollywood production system.
“We spoke to several writers who saw this tool as a way to help them sell their work to producers and studios,” he continued. “Screenwriters can create visuals that help sell their scripts to producers. Producers can use multimedia to entice studios. Studios need an affordable pre-visualization solution for storyboards. And directors need new ways to communicate their evolving vision and build consensus among key stakeholders and employees.”
Lore Machine, launched in 2021 by Campion, uses generative AI to create visual presentations such as storyboards, comic books, and motion graphics for future releases based on scripts, books, and articles uploaded by users. As Campion explains, the Lore Machine uses calls to OpenAI’s GPT and Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion to generate visuals.
Campion, a writer and engineer, said there are currently 25,000 people on the Lore Machine waiting list. The platform is expected to launch in 2024, he said. “There seems to be interest in the story-scale multimedia generation,” he said.
He explained that users can customize text and image descriptions within the Lore Machine interface, as well as choose from a variety of image styles, including fantasy, animation, and cyberpunk.
Campion said it has received a lot of interest from the game development community as a useful tool for building what Campion calls “base game art.” He has also expressed interest from corporations and film companies.
To address the collaborative nature of the industry, Campion said Lore Machine will offer unlimited accounts and license seats for “power users.”
Comparing his project to Robert Moog’s synthesizer released in 1964, Campion said the Lore Machine uses a multimodal AI model to facilitate storytelling and content creation, rather than an AI generator that generates only one type of content, such as text or images. He said similar changes can be made.
Campion acknowledges that these traditional models are impressive, but points out some limitations.
“The thing about these systems is they’re not very good at building a story,” Campion said. “And that was the genesis of (the Lore Machine).”
Campion has a long career in multimedia production. From 2004 to 2020, Campion served as Vice Media’s head of publishing. In 2009, Campion founded Motherboard, the technology division of Vice Media.
Campion did not specify the investment funds, but said Lore Machine is backed by a group of partners including DAO Jones and the 100 Acres investment fund. Those investors got an early look at what the tool could do.
“Our early prototypes were adaptations of Clifford Simak’s Contraption and Samuel T. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which attracted a lot of attention in the burgeoning comic book world,” Campion said. “Since then, we’ve been building partnerships with the online comics community and some traditional comics and comics studios.”
“We are exploring all types of partnerships with other single-mode AI systems, with the primary goal of creating the ultimate multi-modal storytelling system,” Campion added. “We see this as a generator-agnostic system, where people can eventually bring whatever generator they want to use and connect it to the system.”
Campion said users can export images and text containing characters, locations and scenes in high resolution. Lore Machine added that it intentionally kept its export options open to encourage creativity and not dictate to users how they use the assets.
Regarding privacy and intellectual property protection, Campion said the Lore Machine uses a proprietary file format called “.lore” that is stored in the cloud and records story decisions, styles and text owned by users.
“We created this file format for several reasons,” Campion said. “The first thing was to collaborate so people could iterate on the results,” he said. “What we immediately realized was that the “.lore” file format was very useful for provenance. So it’s recorded in the background while you’re putting together your story, and it’s all your property. We can’t access it.”
Addressing concerns artists have about AI, Campion said Lore is committed to the ethical use of technology, to producing AI-generated works, ensuring they are original and respecting existing copyrights. For example, Lore Machine does not allow unauthorized use of artists’ and writers’ work.
“AI has clearly been an important topic in Hollywood and a key issue in both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes,” he said. “But we’ve been digging deeper into how generative can be responsibly integrated into workflows, and learning more about how generative (AI) can benefit writers.
“During the WGA strike, I posted a consulting opportunity for screenwriters on LinkedIn, and in 72 hours I received 1,100 applications and met with 63 of those applicants,” Campion recalled. “I’ve always found that screenwriters aren’t so anti-AI, they just don’t want to be left out of the conversation.”
And once the screenwriters got their hands on the Lore Machine, they joined in.
“When they sat down to experiment with new tools, they were seeing what we were seeing,” Campion said. “authorization.”
But he acknowledged that current copyright law is inadequate to address the complexities posed by generative technologies.
As generative AI becomes more popular, companies, artists, and writers are taking AI developers to court alleging copyright infringement.
Last September, Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon creator George R.R. Martin joined other authors, including John Grisham and Elin Hilderbrand, in suing ChatGPT creator OpenAI, alleging that their work had been used to train chatbots without permission. joined the lawsuit. Last October, Universal Music Group filed a lawsuit against Claude AI developer Anthropic, alleging that the chatbot’s training data was provided with copyrighted song lyrics.
The Hollywood strike was sparked by writers and actors who saw it as a way to displace their skills or take a cut from the salaries they felt they deserved.
Despite all this, Campion said he is optimistic about the future of technology and what it could mean for storytelling and human connection.
“The cat is out of the bag and we have a serious responsibility as a human race for how we use this and how we treat each other,” Campion said. “I believe this is a very important opportunity to show that humans can actually be very good.”
“I have to believe that there is an ethical way to navigate this new challenge,” Campion continued. “So I tend to think of a very promising future with more creativity.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
