Cinema schools adopt AI. Should they?

Jake Panek, a major 20 -year -old cinema, said he had a good time at DEPAUL University in Chicago and a very positive experience with the school’s cinema program. However, a recent email alerting students from a new course in the “scripting of AI” sparked an unexploited source of rage.

The email, which was broadcast last week, offered undergraduate students the possibility of examining “the rapidly evolving role of artificial intelligence in the scripting process” and of helping students “explore how AI can support and improve creativity in writing for cinema and television”. Panek didn’t have it.

Shortly after receiving the email, the young filmmaker was so angry that he went to Instagram to express his thoughts: “Seeing this email made me bother to be a student in DEPAUL cinema”, he wrote, marking the school and his film program. “I think that the professor who” teaches “this course, each student who enrolled in this course, and all those who allow this course occur should be reappeared seriously – this course should not be one thing.”

When Panek told me about the program, his disdain for the class did not seem to have decreased much. “I think it’s bullshit,” he told me. “I am so angry with the very existence.”

The Depaul Cinematographic Arts School is considered one of the country’s best film programs, and it has often distinguished itself by allowing the student body to access cutting -edge equipment and software. Recently, however, school officials were interested in AI. In May, the film program organized a symposium “ia in the arts”, designed to explore “the transformative role of artificial intelligence in the arts”. Even before this event, some people from the administration pushed the film program to further explore the integration of AI into his study program, said Matthew Quinn, Professor Depaul who was responsible for teaching the new scripting course.

“Our school, the school of cinematographic arts, is part of the College of Computing and Digital Media,” said Quinn. “Our dean is from the computer school, so they are of course very invested in AI.” DEPAUL also has a working group on AI, he added, noting that there was an effort on a university scale to study and integrate AI into the program.

What does a course “ia screenwriting” involve? Quinn said that the course was very similar to the other scripting courses it had taught, the key difference being that the generative AI was used to help create and shape the material. “So, as when it comes to generating newspaper lines, then working on the biography of the characters and the development of the characters, then finally culminating with an overview (an overview is a summary of the scenes of a script)”, said that quinn that the students of the class “would collaborate” with Chatgpt. Later, students would participate in a workshop where their assignments were discussed, said Quinn. Students would talk about their creative process, discussed their collaborations with chatbots and explained what was “useful” and what was not. The class was designed to reproduce “the development process of a script,” he said.

Quinn has also noted that currently, the Depaul cinematographic program has a policy that obliges students to recognize the use of AI in the scenario. If students use it, they have to explain why and how, he said. It is currently at the discretion of the ability to determine whether students can use AI in this way or not, he added.

DEPAUL is not the only film school to have started to offer courses related to AI. The University of South California recently launched an AI for the media and the narrative studio, which is designed to explore how technology can be integrated into the film, media and journalism industries. UCLA Extension recently launched a new course called “Creative Process in the Age of IA”, and even the American Film Institute plunged its toes into space, after making its debut a series of three -day seminars on “Storytelling and IA” earlier this year.

Holly Willis, co -director of the USC AI studio, said that the school became interested in developing a new AI program in 2023, shortly after the release of Chatgpt and the vague cultural interest for the generator. “It was pretty much at the same time,” said Willis. “I think that at that time, it was so huge, we made” Oh, it’s a really important change “,” she said.

Willis, who has now taught several courses examining the potential creative applications of AI, describes himself as “deeply critical” of technology, but also said that it was “very enthusiastic about (the) new forms of narration” that technology could provide. “I think there are problems defined with the generative AI and how it was introduced to filmmakers and artists, and how, at the moment, a large part of the property of the tools is in a business context,” she said. “But at the same time, the work I see the artists is really exciting.”

In an article on the use of AI in the arts, Willis highlights the work of Souki Mansoor, a former documentary maker who “came across the Rabbit of AI rabbit” and now works in the technology industry. Mansoor, who was a guest speaker in one of the theme of Willis’s AI, is currently working for Openai as “Sora Artist Program Lead”, according to her Linkedin profile. We do not know what it really means, but Mansoor, who describes himself as a “recovery filmmaker”, produced visual parts using platforms like those Openai is currently marketing. Indeed, in 2023, she “generated” a coupled short film An AI dream of DogfishUsing prompts in Gen2 from Runwayml.

While Willis expresses the excitement for works of the genre that Mansoor has produced, she notes that some of her students seem a little concerned with the infusion of AI in the arts. “I would say that students are very nervous,” she said. “The first class that I taught when we started this initiative, the students were very suspicious … like:” Why do we pay for this education when anyone can now create these images so easily? “” They did not realize that you always needed “skills and narration,” she said.

As for the scripting of Depaul, Quinn said that he had not seen a ton of retreat from students, but there is also no interest. “Right now, there are not even as many students who are enrolled there,” said Quinn. “It might not even work.” He also specified that the course was not the subject of adoption of the AI without thinking. Instead, he described it as a workshop designed to expose students to different perspectives on “the current play of play” of technology and what it could potentially offer creatives. Quinn admitted that he was himself “in conflict” on the use of AI in the creative arts. “It is not as if I were a great supporter of AI and the love of AI,” he said. “It’s no longer like, as an educator, I feel like I do not render a bad service to students if I do not expose them to this or if it did not like it.” Quinn wants students to make an informed decision to find out whether they want to get involved with AI or not, and to do it, they must understand it.

For students like Panek, however, the whole seems to be a huge betrayal of the fundamental principles of the creative process. “I understand the desire, as an artist, to take a shortcut,” proposed Panek. After all, making movies is really difficult, and it may often seem that the world is against you. But Panek said that he and his pet comrades find their own means of solving problems – it’s a part of films. “Taking the shortcut of the generator” ultimately “does nothing for anyone,” he said. “You don’t win anything by typing something on a computer and making it spitting something,” he added.

“The cinema is difficult,” said Panek, while noting that if “you are not ready to … Find your own solutions to things, and your first thought is” Oh, well generator IA exists, just use this’ “It is difficult to really call you an artist.