And producer of the lion king about how creatives are using the tools. And the lead negotiator for the sag—aftra union, at the heart of last year's strike, tells us how the thousands of artists he represents feel about the way ai is impacting theirjobs. And later in the show, i sit down with a man who created the first company in the world dedicated to computer graphics for film more than three decades ago. Since then, framestore has conjured up the worlds of paddington, among many others. He's seen sd, imax and vr become the next big thing. I'll ask sir william sargent if he thinks ai is here to stay. Wherever in the world you arejoining us, welcome to this week's talking business. Now, a yearago, one of the most visible global industries was brought to a standstill as more than 100,000 actors, artists and writers went on strike. It brought hollywood and much of the world's tv and film industry to a halt. Even the awards season had to be postponed as the red carpets couldn't be rolled out if there was no—one to walk on them. Now, this week, the emmys kicked off this year's awards season. But the issue at the heart of the strike, how content makers use artificial intelligence, is still the biggest question that hangs over the industry. Apart from information and technology, the film industry is the largest user of artificial intelligence. It's even more prevalent there than in science and medicine. Now, that's according to the industry bible variety's in—depth intelligence platform survey that was conducted in june this year. It also finds that a third of media and entertainment workers who they surveyed currently use ai. Half of the companies they contacted are using generative ai. 50% said it will be used for concept development, and 49% to enhance visual effects, and 49% said they'd use it for marketing and distribution. Well, audrey schomer is the editor of that report. Hollywood is still really much more focused on the risks and costs than the opportunities of generative ai. And, really, the first bar that has to be cleared for generative ai models to be used is the performance of the tools themselves. And the question there is really, is the tech good enough yet for creating the highest production value content, and for meeting the actual production needs of artists or for directors, who have a very high quality bar? second, there's this question, uh, whether using generative ai itself or using it in the wrong way would create other kinds of liabilities for a studio downstream. In postproduction or various stages of the production process. Second, there's this question, uh, whether using generative ai itself or using it in the wrong way would create other kinds of liabilities for a studio downstream. So, really, what we're hearing is that the legal department at studios are often at odds with production teams who might be pushing for the tech to be implemented in ways faster than legal can kind of give the clearance for them to be able to use that. And a lot of that right now is happening on the copyright front. So there's big questions around copyright and the legality of using some of these tools, um, because of the risks downstream. Earlier in september, as george clooney and brad pitt arrived in venice for the annual film festival, another film competition was running alongside. The reply ai film festival showcases new short films that have ai at the heart of their production. One of the judges was the man behind the disney blockbuster hit the lion king — and hejoins me now. Rob minkoff, welcome to the programme. And let me start with this — you've just come back from that reply ai festival in venice. How is al being used in some of those films? it was a really interesting, very eye—opening kind of experience to see what some of these artists were actually able to accomplish using ai. There was a variety of different styles and techniques. Each film—maker really had a different, unique vision for the work that they were doing. And the al was being used quite differently for each of the different kind of productions. And from those big films to the sort of more day to day work, how is al changing what you do? how can it improve, or in some respects, detract from the job that you do, a creativejob? stylistically, what is the most shocking to me is actually when it replicates reality as effectively as it does. That has always been, for years and years, decades, literally since the invention of computers, or computers started to be used for the production of animation and film—making, there has been this thing called the uncanny valley, and the uncanny valley was meant to describe the difference between what a computer could create and reality and that it was never. . . It was a giant gulf and that you'd see these things that were trying to look real, but they didn't look real at all. Much to my surprise, i am seeing ai—generated live action that is just mind—blowingly realistic. It's really beyond anything i could have possibly expected. So will ai have an impact on all kinds of films and film—making? absolutely — how it will happen is a different question. When it will happen is a different question. And how humans are going to, uh, manage this process and also participate in this process is something that obviously is on everybody�*s minds. There have been a lot of concerns, haven't there, about how ai is being used in the movie industry, particularly when it comes to things like copyright. It was, of course, a really key issue in that hollywood strike last year. Do you think that those who are embracing and developing this technology have done enough to address those concerns? copyright law is actually quite complicated in and of itself, and it's really there to try to balance the interests that are both commercial on the one side and then public interest on the other side. That said, copyright tends to favour corporations over the individual. What i mean by that is an individual who owns the copyright of the work that they create is not necessarily in a position to defend that copyright. Obviously, it can be extraordinarily expensive to fight against someone who's infringing your copyright, whereas corporations have huge batteries of lawyers whose job it is on a daily basis to fight those fights. So it has not quite yet been resolved. There is so much hype around ai right now. Does it live up to the expectations? has it been that game—changer we thought it would be, or is actually the reality it's a little bit disappointing in what it can actually deliver? as far as it living up to its hype, i would say, for me, it's far exceeded its hype because it. . . What it is capable of, even only a few short years ago, i would have said would be impossible to do. And now we're seeing that it's being done, so. . . But is it ready for prime time? no — ai is not really capable currently of actually making anything close to an entire film, even under the direction of a human being. You've talked about how ai learns from what already exists, content that humans have created in the past. That's how ai learns. So is it fair to say that it's generating new stuff based on what's already gone before? so we're never going to get a new idea, just variations of old ideas. No, ithink, again, that's a misunderstanding about how ai works. Um, ai doesn't do it on its own. So, ai is really a tool that can be used by a human artist, uh, to create something. And so the idea of how you prompt ai is actually more important than ai itself. So the visionary in this equation currently is a human artist, not the ai. I wonder what sort of movies are most susceptible to the influence of ai. You were predominantly and emanate —— animation — is it fair to say it's a game changer, it's easier to integrate ai into that sort of work? that sort of work? first of all, that sort of work? first of all. It's — that sort of work? first of all. It's very _ that sort of work? first of all, it's very important. All, it's very important understand that al is in its infancy. It is currently developing as a medium, and again, it's moving at lightning speed and what it is capable of doing is remarkable. But it's also not capable of doing an awful lot. So it's not like this can happen overnight. So i would say, ai will continue to develop more on the fringes of not even the business per se. The biggest impact ai might have on the industry at some point, not right now, is to make production less expensive. 0bviously that is a big concern because less expensive means less people are involved, and obviously that's not a good thing. But that certainly may be an impact. Given how quickly ai is changing, i wonder what the role of a human will be in the future. And you worked on the lion king, of course. And i wonder, that incredible opening sequence of the movie, the imagery, the music, the emotion — could ai have done that? i think that, obviously, you know, now that lion king exists, ai could do a facsimile, could replicate it, could, you know, use it metaphorically to create a sequence about, you know, gerbils or, you know, ants or, or some other kind of, you know, animals or in a different context, a different world. Uh, but ai is not going to make a sequence like the lion king unless there is a film—maker who has an idea to make a sequence like that and simply uses ai as a tool to try to create something. And so i've got to ask, do you ever expect that you'll see that the winner of best picture at the oscars will be an ai programme? maybe the question is, should ai ever win best picture? my answer would be, of course, no. I'm not interested necessarily, again, in al as a film—maker so much as it is as a tool to be used by film—makers. So as far as ai. . . Ai would have a particularly difficult time, you know, getting on the stage and accepting the award. Rob minkoff, really good to talk to you on the programme this week. Thank you. A year ago, my next guest was leading the discussion about the future of the industry on behalf of 160,000 actors, performers, voice artists and new writers. Sag—aftra brought the industry to a standstill. And the issue around al was at the heart of that dispute. And while the film and tv strike may be over, the union still has issues and is on strike over the use of ai in video games. The union's chief negotiatorjoins me now. Duncan crabtree—ireland, welcome to the programme. And, look, we're nearly a year on from that hollywood actors�* strike where actors, the movie business pretty much ground to a halt. Where are we now in terms of the agreements that came out of that dispute? the agreement that we reached at the end of the strike last year, this was in november of 2023, was really, of course, ground—breaking and addressed informed consent, fair compensation — 16 pages of details in that negotiation. But even though it's been less than a year since that strike was resolved, we've had several additional evolutions in the subsequent bargaining. For example, after that, only two months later, we reached an agreement with a video game voice replication company called replica studios that provided for more detailed protections, including things like safe storage, including things like time limitations on the use of digital replication within certain types of ai models. And then we took that a step further with our television animation negotiations to really drive those protections towards the unique needs of animation and voice work, which is one of the most threatened areas by ai technology. And then after that, we reached a deal with all the major record labels regarding our sound recordings code, which covers singers who record music for major record labels, to make sure that those same protections applied there. And now, of course, we're on strike against the major video game companies over this exact same issue. So i guess we've reached that stage where the argument isn't about whether ai will be used in the entertainment industry, but about whether the regulation and the compensation deals around it are fair to those human actors, producers and writers. I would say it's not about whether ai will be used in the business, it is about how ai will be used in the business and what kind of guardrails and limits there are that can be put on it. Ai is not implementing itself. Humans are making decisions about how ai is implemented, and so we can decide to do it in a way that is more forward thinking, that cares about its impact on people. But the idea that somehow we're going to block ai, stop it from happening, as much as some people would like that to be the case, that's just not. . . That's not possible. And past history of technology, from the invention of electricity to the invention of the internet have proved that over and over again. The movie industry is always evolving. There have been developments that are game—changing, everything from the move from silent movies to the talkies, from black and white to technicolor. How would you describe the significance of this revolution, ai in the movie industry? each of those developments, did, you know, wreak havoc on the industry, and it certainly changed who were the winners and the losers out of that technological advancement. But what's really unique about this moment is this is the first time we've really had the technology that can make it appear as though you have done something that you didn't really do, in a very intimate sort of way, in a close up and personal sort of way, and i think that has all kinds of implications, not only for people having to compete against themselves forjobs, which is itself horrifying, but also with people having things attributed to them that they didn't agree to or don't want to be part of. And that's not really something we've had to face before. Now, of course, awards season has kicked off again. The emmys were just last week. Do you think ai could ever win in the best picture category? if you mean can a picture that uses ai technology to enhance the storytelling, to make that picture something that maybe it couldn't have been without all those ai tools? yeah, that's definitely a possibility. If you mean, will an ai picture that literally has been completely generated with al from beginning to end in every aspect, from the writing to direction to performance, will that be something that could win an oscar? i don't think so, with the current state of technology and nor any foreseeable evolution of it. Duncan crabtree—ireland, so good to have you on the programme this week. Thank you. Thank you so much, i appreciate it. Now, sir william sargent has been visualising the future in some of the most spectacular ways for more than 30 years. Framestore, the company he founded in london in the 1980s, has a long list of awards for some of the biggest films, commercials and virtual reality projects of our time. They include the worlds of harry potter and paddington, to name just a few. Framestore has accrued three 0scars, baftas, primetime emmys and practically all of the design awards the commercial world has come up with. I sat down with him a little earlier and asked him how revolutionary ai really is. Sir william sargent, nice to have you with us. Um, talk to me first of all about the impact of something like al on one of the oldest industries. How is it reshaping what you do? al, or we tended to call it machine learning, we've been using it for 20 years, say, and it's a productivity gain. Um, you can do things, you can speed things up. So what you're doing is you're giving more capability into the hands of the artist, the editor, the film—maker, whatever. And so for us, it's an incredibly positive development. But, of course, it has negatives in the positives, like every new technology. We've written a0 years' worth of new technology in our sector. The question mark in the ai is about big investment. It's expensive, 0k? um, and so the question is, do you do the investment? do you wait for your suppliers to do the investment? do you use the google. . . You know, we use google tools, for example. Or we use autodesk. So do we wait for them to develop the capabilities? and so it's a mixture of, like, what do we do, what do we wait for others to do, what do we follow and what do we go ahead? and so for a0 years that's been the game which is, at which point do wejump in? and as you said, this is nothing new, in some respects. You've been using kit like this for a long time, but it has got more sophisticated. Its abilities are growing all the time. Where will it make the biggest difference? where is it reshaping the industry at the moment? at the moment, if we take my specific sector, the high—end visual effects and that, it's the conceptualising. So, you know, you're designing characters, you're designing scenes, environments and so forth, and then you're pre—visualizing it. Where it takes longer is when you're going up to the high resolution images that require a lot of power, computing power and so forth and that, and that you're beginning to draw augment. . . . . Ai tools in the process. So you look at the process of rotoscoping, for example, right? you're looking at that and going, well, i can improve that bit of it. Right. But it's not like i'm transforming it overnight. Everything of the past a0 years has been evolutionary. It's never been revolutionary. And i'm interested in those conversations that you have, maybe with directors, um, you know, which way does that conversation go? is it you going to them and saying, i can offer you all of these things? 0rare they coming to you and saying, you know what, william? i want more and more and more and you've got to deliver it for me? it's neither, because we try to get them not to think about the technology, because, of course, it's storytelling. 0k. Right? so we say to them, just what is it you're. . . ? tell us your story and then let us worry about how we're going to do it for you. Now, iteration is the thing that costs money. The director goes, i don't quite like that. Could it go left a bit or right a bit or pink? or whatever it is. And you go, 0k. Then you go away and do a version, and they go, oh, i didn't mean that pink, i meant. . . So iteration is the bit that costs time, takes money, etc, and that's what adds to the production costs. So a significant amount of production cost is tied up in iteration, ideation, all of that. Now, if you can remove that and make that very efficient, you then are putting all the money on the screen. However good the technology is, one assumes there are still limitations. Of course. There are still, you know, ceilings on what you can do. What are the biggest challenges when it comes to that? money and time are generally the things that, you know. . . And that's not changed in decades. That's never changed. It hasn't changed going back 100 years of even print—making times, 0k? so, for us, um. . . So if you take the training ai models on that, right, that's very expensive. I mean, that's a. . . There's some article somewhere recently that said in 2027, we may run out of electricity in the world to power the models. Yeah. So exponentially the demand on electricityjust to drive the servers is massive. That i find fascinating, cos a lot of people won't assume that that is a thing. They just assume they see a computer, it's turned on. But actually the processing power and the power consumption of the computers that you are using to create this stuff is astronomical. Well, think about it. Microsoft said a week or two ago, they're putting another ten billion intojust developing the tools. It's like. . . That's mind boggling. So, on one hand, there's a technological capability as well, and talk to me about what it allows your kind of artists to do or maybe not do, because, you know, whenever a new technology comes along, there are the critics who say it takes away the creativity, it takes away the skill, it takes away, you know, their ability to be an artist. I'm assuming, given what you do, you're very much on the side that this is a tool, it is not a replacement. It basically gets you to the starting point of the human condition quicker. And that applies whether you're a lawyer developing a contract or making a television programme. You're getting to the point of now going. . . Now being creative. 0k. So if you imagine, like, there's a lot of drudgery, you get the material, you get the footage in, you have to label it all, all this sort of stuff. If you could get rid of all that stuff before you start editing and making the choices in the edit, right, then. . . . . You're in a good place. How transformative would you say this ai revolution is? because, you know, the movie industry has gone through many, you know, um, you know, from the silent movies to the, you know, black and white and colour and the way stuff is shot, the way, you know, technology changes, the way you are able to tell stories. How transformative is this moment? we started by being the first to apply computers to film—making, digital. I'lljust give you an example of you could replicate crowds digitally. You couldn't do that in analogue before. That was. . . It was. . . People didn't use the word transformative then, but it was. Um, the use in bbc, for example, of multi—camera situations, etc, which are all technology driven and that, that was transformative. But nobody spoke about it being transformative. It's evolution. It's as each capability comes along. And so for me, ai is the continuing evolution of how you make content and what you now can do. And the big transformation is you can make higher quality stuff at a lower price point. And so in games you can deliver a higher environment at much higher qualities, rather than being a new game, it doesn't mean the gameplay goes away, it means that the experience you're giving, particularly where you're immersing people in a high—resolution environment, that becomes economic, which previously it wasn't. And it becomes utterly immersive. . . You got your eye on the future, and they're saying to you, what will we need to invest in? what can we offer to clients? what are you most excited about? i've been very excited for many years — the stories we consume, we consume on different platforms. So i'm a football fan, ifollow platforms. So i'm a football fan, i follow the platforms. So i'm a football fan, ifollow the premiership on my phone, i watch the matches live, it's like a soap opera every day. I can choose to do ten hours a day — all follow a football match on the line by line. So it's the same with story lines, i happen to like harry potter, i'd like to be given some content across all platforms. And this is where ai comes in, because all then be able to take these storylines there and go, i can make some low—resolution material out of the and provide that to the fans in a way that was inconceivable five years ago. So for me, what's really exciting is telling the story across the platforms, and there is a director at the moment who will be able to hold the story in their minds, and it will be an immersive experience. That person is really directing it, ijust person is really directing it, i just wonder who they are. I want to work with that person. And it becomes utterly immersive. . . 0h, completely. . . Across every platform, wherever you might get it, in different forms long, short, whatever. Yeah. And, you know, paddington is coming out soon, and we're already seeing it proliferate in all sorts of spaces. You know, there's a new physical show opened up near here recently. Physical. How incredible. Thank you so much. Really nice to talk to you. Nice to see you. Well, that's it for this week. I hope you enjoyed the show. You can keep up—to—date with all the latest on the global economy on the bbc news website or smartphone app. Thanks for watching, and i'll see you soon. Bye— bye. Hello. Well, it's already been a lively start to the weekend, with a number of thunderstorms reported on saturday across england and wales. This was one cluster of storms that went across the skyline of ashbourne, in derbyshire — the same storms earlier in the day dumped what seems to be marble—sized hail in wolverhampton. And that cluster of storms will clear away northwards from merseyside, cheshire, and north wales — but then, our focus shifts towards the south and across northern france, where we've got more thundery downpours waiting, and they will swing in. Now, worst—case scenario on sunday, some communities could see a month's worth of rainfall — so there's an increasing threat of seeing some localised flooding building in as we progress through sunday. Next few hours, then, sees those storms arrive from the south. In scotland, we've still got a lot of low cloud and drizzle across eastern areas, a bit misty, too. Temperatures for the most part around 13—16 celsius for england and wales, a bit cooler than that in scotland. Sunday's forecast, then — those thundery downpours with us for much of the day, and there'll be some places that see storm after storm, particularly i think across parts of the midlands and parts of wales, as well. Further northeastwards, into eastern scotland, another cloudy and dull day with some mist patches around the coastline, still some spots of drizzle. Should be brighter and drier in northern ireland, with some sunny spells and sunshine for west scotland, too. Monday — well, we've still got some rain to come across england and wales, heavy and thundery still. Another area of rain works into northern scotland through monday — and that's actually a cold front, so that'll be starting to drop the temperatures across northern scotland. Highs of 12 in stornoway, 13 for aberdeen, and just ten in lerwick. In towards the middle part of the week, we see areas of low pressure move across the country, bringing some heavy rain particularly focussed on england and wales. 0nce that's cleared through, we then get these northwesterly winds diving in across the country — and that will really drop the temperatures as the week goes by. Tuesday, we pick up on our cold front in scotland, bringing some rain here — that will move into northern ireland and northern england as we go through the day. Further southwards, across the rest of england and wales, it finally stops raining. Should be a drier day with more in the way of sunshine, and still some reasonable temperatures in the south. It's turning colder in the north, though — just ten in aberdeen and 1a for belfast. And, as we go deeper into the new week, stays airstrikes on lebanon's capital, beirut. Ukraine strikes two large ammunition depots inside russia — the second such attack in less than a week. Us vice president kamala harris accepts cnn's invitation for a second presidential debate against donald trump — one he says he won'tjoin. Hello, i'm carl nasman. We begin in the middle east, as hezbollah says it has fired dozens of missiles toward israel early sunday in response to repeated attacks by israel into lebanon. In the last hour hezbollah said on telegram it had targeted israel's ramat david airbase, 20 km south of the city of haifa. Air raid sirens were also triggered in several areas of northern isarel, including near haifa, according to israel.