Lore Machine’s AI tool for film and TV writers says it’s a ‘bullet proof use case’
12 months ago Benito Santiago
Generative AI imaging tools like Runway, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney have redefined what it means to be an artist in 2023. While some creators are wary of artificial intelligence, Los Angeles-based Lore Machine says the new platform could be a powerful ally. Hollywood writers.
“We originally built the system for screenwriters to view their scripts—this was actually the first group to register,” says Lore Machine founder Tobey Campion. “Living in LA, the most obvious use case for the Lore Machine is the Hollywood production system.
“We talked to some of these writers – they saw it as a way to sell the device to producers and studios,” he continued. “Screenwriters could build visuals to help sell their scripts to producers. Producers could use multimedia to woo studios. Studios needed affordable preview solutions for storyboards. And directors needed a new way to communicate their evolving vision and build consensus among key stakeholders and crew.”
In the year Lore Machine, launched by Campion in 2021, uses generative AI to create visual presentations such as storyboards, comic books, and—in a future release—motion graphics based on user-uploaded scripts, books, and articles. Lore Machine, Campion explained, uses calls to OpenAI's GPT and Stability AI's Stable Diffusion to create visualizations.
According to Campion, a writer and technologist, there are currently 25,000 people on the Lore Machine waiting list. The platform It is expected to launch in 2024, and “the demand for the multimedia generation on a historical scale seems to be there.
He explained that users can customize text and image descriptions in the Lore Machine interface, as well as select different image styles, including fantasy, anime and cyberpunk.
Campion says it's received a lot of interest from the game development community as a useful tool for building what Campion calls “basic game art.” Corporations and even film studios have shown interest.
To address the collaborative nature of the industry, Lowrey said Machine offers unlimited accounts and licensed seats for “power users.”
In the year Comparing it to Robert Moog's Composer released in 1964, Lore says Machine can revolutionize storytelling and content creation by using multimodal AI models instead of AI generators that produce the same content, such as text or images.
While Campion acknowledges that these traditional models are impressive, he points out some limitations.
“What these systems are not good at is building stories,” says Campion. “And that was the genesis. [Lore Machine]He said.
Campion has a long career creating multimedia. From 2004 to 2020, he served as Campion's Vice Media Head of Publishing. In the year In 2009, Campion founded the technology wing of VC Media, Motherboard.
While Campion did not provide specifics about the investment fund, Lore Machine said it is backed by a group of partners including DAO Jones and 100 Acres Investment Fund. Those investors have already seen what the device can do.
“Our early prototypes were adaptations of Clifford Simmack's Contraction and Samuel T. Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which attracted a lot of attention from the burgeoning comic book world,” Campion said. “Next, we're building partnerships with online comic communities and some traditional comic and manga studios.”
“We're exploring all kinds of partnerships with other single-modal AI systems, with the ultimate goal of creating the ultimate multimodal storytelling system,” Campion added. “For us, we see it as a generator-agnostic system, where people can bring whatever generator they want to use and put it into the system.”
Users can export images and text along with characters, locations and scenes at high resolution, Campion said, adding that Lore Machine intentionally leaves export options open to encourage creativity and not dictate how users use the assets.
Regarding privacy and intellectual property protection, Campion said Lore Machine uses a proprietary file format called “.lore” that is stored in the cloud and contains the user's story decisions, style and text.
“We developed this file format for a number of reasons,” Campion said. “At first it was for collaboration so that people could replicate the results,” he said. “We realized right away that the .lore” file format is very useful for provenance, and so, when you're building your story, it's shaping up in the background, and that's all your property. We don't have access to it.
Regarding artists' concerns about AI, Lorre said he is committed to using the technology ethically, building AI-generated works that are original, and respecting existing copyrights. For example, unlicensed use of artist's and writer's works is not allowed on Lore Machine.
“AI is clearly a litigious topic in Hollywood and has been a key issue in both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA attacks,” he said. But we wanted to dig deeper into how generative can be responsibly integrated into workflows—we understand how generative. [AI] It can be used to benefit writers.
“During the WGA strike, we posted a mentoring opportunity for screenwriters on LinkedIn, and in 72 hours we received 1,100 applications, and we met with 63 applicants,” Campion recalled. “Conversely, I've found that screenwriters aren't so anti-AI, they just don't want to stay away from the conversation.”
And once the scriptors got their hands on the Lore Machine, they were on board.
“When they sat down to try out the new equipment, they were seeing what we were seeing,” Campion said. “Empowerment.”
However, he acknowledges that current copyright laws are inadequate for the complexities introduced by generative technologies.
As generative AI becomes more popular, companies, artists and writers are taking AI developers to court over claims of copyright infringement.
In September, Game of Thrones and House of Dragons creator George RR Martin joined other authors, including John Grisham and Elin Hilderbrand, in suing OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, alleging that their work was used to train chatbots without permission. In October, Universal Music Group filed a lawsuit against cloud AI developer Anthropophonic, whose chatbot fed its training data copyrighted song lyrics.
The Hollywood strike was sparked by writers and actors taking pay cuts from what they feel they deserve, or the technology to replace them.
Despite all that, Campion says he's optimistic about the future of the technology and what it means for storytelling and human connection.
“The cat's out of the bag, and we have some serious responsibilities as human beings in how we use these and how we treat each other,” Campion said. “I believe this is a very important opportunity to show that people can really be great.
“I have to believe there is an ethical way to navigate our way through this new challenge,” Campion continued. “So I tend to think of a more optimistic future where there will be more innovation.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.