Near the collonaded entrance to Sony Pictures’ historic Culver City film studio, a tech-powered rival has sprung up this summer. The artists at Promise, a new studio feeding off the potential of AI, can glimpse the lots where Singin’ in the Rain and Men in Black were shot, but no longer do they need to get beyond the studio’s high walls to make their visions come true.
From far more modest premises, they are making movies with rapidly accelerating AI models that create backgrounds, special effects and even “synthetic performers” – using US models but also driven by market-leading Chinese AI.
