Television hardware company TCL has ventured into the artificial intelligence (AI) sector to generate movie trailers and potentially position itself as a content creator. Its latest project is an AI-created movie trailer for an upcoming romance film, “Next Stop Paris”. The AI-generated male lead character bears a strong resemblance to actor Austin Butler. The plot follows an AI-generated female lead, who is remarkably similar to model Miranda Kerr, who takes a train to Paris after a major argument with her fiancé and encounters the AI-created Austin Butler.
TCL utilised Runway ML to produce the trailer for “Next Stop Paris”, entering text prompts into this text-to-video generator to create moving images. In addition, Midjourney, a popular AI art generator, was used in parts of the trailer creation. While the one-minute trailer showed some of the pitfalls of AI-generated videos, such as unnatural body movements and illogical body proportions, the company’s Chief Content Officer Chris Regina viewed the use of AI as a “marketing differentiator”. Regina remarked that this marks a first for a trailer and an entertainment company, and feeds into the significant curiosity surrounding AI.
Interestingly, following the release of the trailer, several news articles, which appear to be AI-generated, surfaced on Google Search when the term “TCLtv+” was entered. One such article found on “YTech News” was credited to “ChatGPT” and “Artificial Intelligence”, with an author named “Iwona Majkowska” associated with only one other piece found on a Slovakian domain.
The use of AI in film, TV, and music is not entirely new. OpenAI released an AI video generator, Sora, earlier this year. Despite sparking some fear among creatives, the technology has garnered much excitement. OpenAI’s Sam Altman has even reportedly pitched the technology to Hollywood executives.
