In the last day, I’ve been blown away by two developments coming out of China. One is an AI movie sequence that’s only 15 seconds long; the second was the Spring Festival celebration to welcome the New Year of the Fire Horse. If you haven’t seen them, you need to, because both show how technology is developing faster than any of us know.
The movie sequence is a fight between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. It’s a short sequence, just fifteen seconds, but it is totally convincing and it’s all AI generated by China’s ByteDance, owned by Tiktok, and its tool called Seedance.
Irish director Ruairi Robinson posted a video on X that he made with a two-line prompt, in which Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise have a cinematic choreographed fight.
https://x.com/RuairiRobinson/status/2021394940757209134?s=20
Hollywood has gone into meltdown as, if you can generate this sort of action sequence with just a two line prompt, what is the future of movies, actors and the industry?
The second thing that broke this week is the start of the Chinese New Year and a choreographed sequence of kung fu with children and robots. If you didn’t see it, it blew my mind.
What it makes us realise is that the age of AI and robots has come of age. More than this, we are becoming a multiplanetary species where we can holiday on the Moon and travel to Mars and beyond. Sounds stupid? Change your thinking.
Anyone, anywhere, can create a movie with just a few lines of story. Everyone, everywhere, are about to enter an age where robots do whatever they wish. And all of us can travel to the stars and back for fun, holidays and exploration.
This is not sci-fi. It is right here, right now.
What does this mean?
It means that every job, every company, everything we do and everything we take for granted is open to question. I guess the surprising thing is that we thought this was a speculative future. It was the future, but now it’s here. What are you going to do about it?
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...