Welcome to the Weekly Movie Thread, your place on the Avocado to discuss films with your fellow commenters. Want to make a recommendation? Looking for recommendations? Want to share your opinions of movies, both new and classic? 

AI.

If there was a term that really grew in popularity in 2023, it’s this. It started off innocuously enough, with apps that let you choose a random phrase and let the computer spit out a funny image with too many fingers for you.

Now it’s become a sort of flashpoint and a key element in the writer’s guild and actor’s guild strikes. Will writers eventually be replaced by ChatGPT? Shoot, it may already have happened unofficially, with writers turning in scripts with ChatGPT assistance.

Will actors have their likenesses scanned, and then uncredited and unreimbursed be used to populate people in the background? Will your likeness be exploited after your pass away, like Christopher Reeve, George Reeves, and Adam West were in the recent Flash movie?

What about visual effects artists? Will there be a time when their work will be replaced by an autonomous AI? Given the current way that people are using AI, aren’t you just plagiarizing already existing material?

And then there’s the flip side: AI could represent a new tool for artists. One that can generate solutions that hadn’t crossed their mind previously. The AI opening to Marvel’s Secret Invasion proved controversial, but I thought it may have been the best part of the series. Artists used AI generated images to create a haunting collage of shapeshifters.

All of this, of course, is twisted by the moneymen, who see AI as a fabulous cost cutting measure. Eliminate the artists, and you eliminate the payroll that goes to the artists.

The feeling that everyone has, though, is that it’s inevitable. AI is here. Movies will be incorporating the process one way or the other. And as those fine folks on the picket line know, the time to sort this out is now.

Today’s bonus prompt: how do you think films would best benefit by incorporating AI technology?