The Footage in This Sci-Fi Movie Project Comes From AI-Generated Images
Imagine producing your own film filled with big-budget scenery, but from a computer.
A tech entrepreneur in Germany named Fabian Stelzer(Opens in a new window) is trying to do just that by using AI-powered programs to create the footage, sound effects, and voices for a 70s-inspired sci-fi film.
The experimental project is called Salt(Opens in a new window), and it's built entirely with AI-generated art. To create the visuals, Stelzer has been tapping publicly available programs such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E 2, which can essentially draw anything you want by relying on a mere text description from the user.
On Twitter, Stelzer has been releasing Salt in short clips, called "story seeds." As you can see, the film project is bit like watching a Ken Burns' documentary revolving around still images. That’s because AI-generated art can’t render moving pictures, at least not yet.
Nevertheless, Stelzer is able to create the feeling of motion through video editing and even some deepfake programs, which can make the characters’ faces move. All the voices in the film—including the female ones—also come from Stelzer, who’s been using an AI voice generator called Murf(Opens in a new window) to create them.
“It’s all AI, except for one voice, which is… mine,” Stelzer told PCMag via Twitter.
Stelzer, who has a background in neuroscience, said he never considered himself an artist. But the growing advancements in AI-based programs show that movie-making could one day be accessible to anyone.
“We're on the verge of a new era, really,” he said, later adding, “To me this is as big as the invention of photography, and to be honest maybe as big as the invention of writing.”
Indeed, programs such as Midjourney and
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