Earlier today, an AI company announced its plan to reconstruct the lost footage from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. In a statement to Variety, the Orson Welles estate has slammed the plans, adding that it was not even informed.
“We saw the various articles on ‘Ambersons’ today. In general, the estate has embraced AI technology to create a voice model intended to be used for VO work with brands. That said, this attempt to generate publicity on the back of Welles’ creative genius is disappointing, especially as we weren’t even given the courtesy of a heads up,” a spokesperson for the Welles estate wrote. “While AI is inevitable, it still cannot replace the creative instincts resident in the human mind, which means this effort to make Ambersons whole will be a purely mechanical exercise without any of the uniquely innovative thinking or a creative force like Welles.“
The Magnificent Ambersons was Welles’ follow-up to Citizen Kane, but he lost control of the project in the editing process. The studio took over and cut out 43 minutes from the movie and reshot the ending. Although the film is still a masterpiece, it was not what Welles had envisioned. The negatives of the cut scenes were later destroyed, and any existing prints of the original cut are deemed lost. “They destroyed Ambersons and it destroyed me,” Welles later said.
The reconstructed scenes won’t be entirely AI. The company plans to shoot some sequences with live actors and use face and pose transfer techniques with AI tools to resurrect the original actors’ performances. The sets will be recreated with 3D models by using extensively archived set photos
Edward Saatchi, CEO of Showrunner, a firm backed by Amazon, stated, “Year by year, the technology is getting closer to prompting entire films with AI. Today, AI can’t sustain a story beyond one short episode.” However, he says his company’s technology is a “step toward a scary, strange future of generative storytelling.“
This isn’t Welles’ only brush with AI. Earlier this year, it was announced that he would be digitally resurrected as an AI tour guide for Storyrabbit. However, that particular venture does have the approval of the Orson Welles estate.
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