‘The Ultimate Goal Is to Make More Movies,’ Says CTO of Stability AI, the Tech Company for Which James Cameron Serves as a Board Member

variety.com:

Carolyn Giardina Hanno Basse — chief tecnology officer of AI tech developer Stability AI, whose board members include James Cameron — discussed his company’s work and the evolution of generative AI in filmmaking during this week’s HPA Tech Retreat, saying, “The ultimate goal is to make more movies.” Pointing to the years it can take to make a Hollywood movie such as Cameron’s blockbuster “Avatar” films, he said, “We heard this from a number of other filmmakers as well: ‘We wanted to make more films in the past, and the time it takes for us, that’s the problem.'” During his talk at the annual Palm Springs event, where AI took center stage, Basse weighed in on subjects such as data provenance and budgets, and spoke about progress being made in filmmaking, predicting that in “probably two years, we’re going to have very high performing open source foundation models.” Stability AI develops generative AI models for image, video, 3D, audio and language, including its flagship model, Stable Diffusion. “Our guiding principles, basically, are that generative AI needs to be part of the production process and not replace it,” Basse said, noting that Stability AI supports an “artist centric” approach and also a “task centric” approach, with some of its latest developments being 3D tools and a prototype for aspect ratio conversion.

Stability AI also involves some notable leaders from the Hollywood community. In addition to Cameron — who Basse said is “really actively involved” — Stability AI’s board chairman is entrepreneur and Napster co-founder Sean Parker, and the company’s CEO is Prem Akkaraju, the former CEO of VFX company Weta.