Guy Ronen: How Arcana Labs Is Using AI Without Killing Creativity | DSH #1652

Are you concerned with deep fakes at all? I'm concerned with deep fake. Not about deep fake in Arcana.
I'm concerned about where the tech could lead us and at some extent not the deepfake itself.

I'm concerned that people will not believe anyone because if President Trump is talking right now and someone will say, hey, it's not real Trump, although it is real Trump.

That's the main issue that I'm concerned about. Here in Arcana, we're safeguarding our users and our ecosystem totally from that.

You cannot duplicate someone without the permission, specific permission.

The D2C side of Arcana, you can't can't even touch brands or faces not just like you know brad pitt or someone very famous but anyone that is on the public domain our system will identify that the face is existing there and will not let you use that wow

all right guys we got guy from arcana labs here today at the ai4 conference he is speaking tomorrow you ready to get this thing going man oh yeah born ready what do you plan on talking about tomorrow so we're going to talk about our is a way into the entertainment industry between the Gen AI domain and the industry that are quite kind of, you know, blocking a lot of those advancement tools, how we're trying to get there and make it ethically and democratize the domain itself.

Right.

So when you say blocking, is that the Hollywood industry blocking or?

There's a lot of, I don't know if it's a blocking per se, but there's a lot of people and industries and organizations that at some extent said, okay, this this Gen AI or generally the movement of Gen AI is going to totally ruin the industry.

No more creativity, no more like, you know, storytelling and things like that, that it's 100% wrong. And that's the main challenge here.

Mainly educate everyone.

What do you think the concerns with Gen AI are from their point of view?

Like any AI advancement in any industry, by the way, that it's going to eliminate

the people and you don't need any more people to work in this domain. and it's gonna do you know content by itself and that's totally not the case

so it's somewhere in the middle right where there's still gonna be people using it it's I think it's way above the middle it's uh I think the above the line positions will stay as they are right now we're not trying to replace storytellers we do need storytellers like AI

Definitely language models can make me cry or laugh and tell me a story that will actually move something

and this is why storytellers, the way to produce, the way to direct everything that is art driven, okay,

I think will stay and definitely for the foreseeing future. Yeah, yeah, you don't get that emotion out of AI yet, right? 100%.

At the end of the day, it's another tool, it's another set of lenses or cameras that cannot operate by themselves.

People are,

in this case, definitely not the weakest link. People are essential here.
If you want to tell a story,

it has to be

initiated from storytellers and creative people.

You guys have a lot of different customers, but filmmakers is a big customer base for you guys, right? Filmmakers, for sure, we build our platform basically.

We started like three years ago, actually, a bit more.

We built our platform at the standard of filmmakers, and we believe that any other use case will fall underneath that because that's a higher standard. So, marketers and any creative needs

can fall underneath filmmaking because that's the right flow to create something. something.
This is basically how our kind of labs and the platform itself built.

This is a bridge basically.

Not sure if I'm jumping ahead of myself, but this is a bridge between taking those tons of technologies and AI engines that are actually changing and evolving and improving on a daily basis.

and bridge that to the audience that need to actually create something with that.

There's a lot of, we're trying to ease the way into the industry and not just filmmakers, any industry, any creative industry, sorry,

to help them kind of translate between the clutter of tons of technologies and the use cases that they need to. And

speaking of audience, audience engagement is being redefined right now, too, right? Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure.

It starts way, way before AI

revolution with real shorts and things like that. People consuming content over mobile much more than actually the traditional ways.

Some of it, it's not even horizontal, and that's surprising. But definitely, the consumers will change a lot of habits.
They want to see something right now, short, enjoy,

keep adjusting to their schedule and timing, and not like we used to go to the theater and watch a film or sitting back home and binging a show. I'd rather watch from home 99% of the time.

For me, 100%. 100%.
100%. Same.
And also big screen.

Technology is moving forward. Like watching everything on a mobile screen, a small mobile screen, you're losing something.
But hey,

things are changing. Yeah.
Did you see the UFC deal yesterday? No. Paramount bought UFC.
Oh, yeah, yeah. All the all live fights will be.
Yeah, $7.7 billion.

So that just shows that PPV is kind of dying out. And now it's moving towards streaming.

Streaming is the hot wave, right? Yeah. Yeah, and it's not just streaming.
It's like people want their content right now, okay, and everything.

Well, UFC, it's a different story, but yeah, people wanna consume everything at the minute. It's the right time for them.

Yeah, now it seems like the biggest shows and movies are coming out on streaming services like Netflix, things like that. Yeah, yeah.
And Netflix is different than auto streamers.

That actually Netflix providing you can be

in Netflix. You know, all the episodes is at one place.

Auto streamers are still trying to kind of drip some episodes and kind of lure you into jumping again into the platform every week.

Totally different than different mobile platform for

Gen Y and Gen Z. There's some consolidation too.
I think Hulu and Disney just merged too as well. Yeah, yeah.

And Paramount and Skidens, there's a lot of like the industry is just moving into centralizing again everything. Yeah, moving out of theaters towards streaming, right? Uh-huh.

Because my generation just doesn't go to the theater. Every time I go now, there's like 10 people there.

It's crazy.

When I was a kid, it was you couldn't even get a ticket. Yeah.
I just reviewed AMC financial reports.

And it's like, you know, everything is going down.

People are just not watching. And they're trying to encourage everyone, like, you know, half of Tuesday, half of Wednesday, just like, just

come and buy a TV. Yeah, right.
I saw they have a monthly membership now too. Yeah.
20 bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I still love watching, you know, a film in a big screen, but hey. That's crazy.

I wonder if they're going to have to move towards streaming theaters like AMC. Oh, it's a good question.
It's a good question.

For sure, the content and the duration of everything should go kind of in and reduce with

the time.

Young generation doesn't have the

attention to what's like two and a half or maybe three hours feature right now. So definitely everything will go in and get shorter right now,

at this moment, as fast as I can. Yeah.
Yeah. For my generation, it's like seven seconds, I think.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

If we're not interested.

I think the biggest platform, the real short, it's like you know uh 50 to 60 seconds and and just like luring you know audience to okay click or buy the next episode and that's an amazing business yeah it's crazy um so how are how is this in being integrated with movies right now and shows is it being utilized yet so ai so ai is moving gradually into being a great solution for specific things we definitely and it's very important to emphasize that we're definitely not a hundred percent there okay and in our kind of we also not kind of encouraging our clients and partners to do 100% AI or don't use AI.

I think the blend and the mix summary, the hybrid kind of approach is the best thing. And also depend on the genre.

I think the 50-50, 60-40, 70-30, call you whatever, and depend on what you want to create. AI is an interesting tool to lower the barrier.

creating reduce the cost of course getting great results at the right places now don't get me wrong like in the next 12 to 24 months we're definitely gonna be there but ai is still not 100 controllable we're getting a lot of clients that are trying to compare between what we're doing and cgi okay

and there's still kind of a gaps and again not what we're doing in in gen in gen ai there's still gaps of controlling the characters a hundred percent Now, a lot of companies developing a lot of capabilities that you can control the movement in the frame, you can control the camera, and that that's actually what's missing in the creative process.

So we're getting there.

Still, I think that emotion capturing

and things like that in dialogue, monologue is still better with real actors, and we're encouraging that. Why is the movement so hard to recreate, you think?

I think it's not the movement, it's controlling 100% control of the frame.

Keep in mind, you can control in a traditional way of filming, you can control the camera, you can control the characters, you can control the scene, the stage itself, sound stage.

In AI, you're creating something out of scratch, right? And now controlling camera, that's one thing, but still controlling all the element inside a frame. It's still more sophisticated.

I think we're literally going to be there really soon.

The AI is

moving forward so fast, so fast. And that's exactly going back to what I'm kind of mentioning.
This is what we're trying to bridge you with Arcana, okay?

We're getting over 25 tools embedded in Arcana with the right workflow for filmmakers.

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Now, we're updating those on a weekly basis because there's new capabilities. We're doing the diligence, we're choosing the right tools for filmmakers.

We have, of course, tons of redundancy to give them different things. We not dictate what you need to use.

But that's what we're saving for our users and audience. We're saving the diligence and understanding which model is better for what and embedding those in the platform.

And now you just need to choose your creative

process and

rest is history. I think you're solving a really big problem because right now it's very expensive to create a film.
Oh yeah. Most people can't afford it.
Oh yeah. Right.

Millions of dollars on average. 100%.
And listen, take a look at Hollywood. 95%, at least 95%.
I'm trying to be conservative here, will never be produced, ever. Wow.

Tons of scripts laying down somewhere.

testing themselves like you know and we're trying to dust off those capabilities we're trying to lower the barrier we're trying to bridge the gap or democratize the the creative process we do believe that the big you know the next steven spielberg or quantity tarantino is is is somewhere here yeah and and most of them doesn't have the means to create something 100

and this is a cruel industry cruel industry even for you know veterans in the industry and that's exactly the movement that we're trying to create yeah and you'll be surprised how many people we're meeting on conferences and and and talking with clients that literally like with shining eyes said i i could never afford a camera when I was a kid.

That was my dream. Now I can create something.
And so many talented people from the industry that no one will let them direct anything because they're just the designers. They're just that.

They're just like now getting the opportunity to take the talent and

do whatever they want to.

The freedom of creativity, I'm always saying that we're selling with freedom of creativity. And that's, I think.

Yeah, that's a major problem. Because right now, Hollywood's gotten to the point where everything's so predictable with the movies.
Oh, y'all just want to make money, right? Oh, yeah.

And you know what? Even those, that predictable one and the big, you know, blockbusters, they're not making money. Really? Take a look at like Mission Impossible, the new one.

They didn't make money on that? Take a look at F1.

Put aside just the huge budget to create this production, to promote that, okay?

The marketing effort and to bring people,

as we mentioned, to bring people into the theaters and watch that and buy a ticket.

They're just not, you know, they don't care those huge, huge studios, but it's not a profitable wow that's crazy because they generated hundreds of millions i thought yeah yeah and it's still like hard to make them profitable now the interesting thing like any ai movement here is that we're just trying to make this domain more efficient

yes it's also going to be faster it's going to you know lower a lot of barriers but it's also going to be much more you know lucrative for anyone that wants to be involved um we're seeing examples on a on a weekly basis that we managed to reduce millions in a budget of production.

Well, again, not with like a full AI, just with touches here and there. And that's amazing.
That's incredible.

This is the difference between a production that will never be profitable into a profitable production.

Simple as that. That's big, Tom.
What's the percentage breakdown on average for these big Hollywood movies?

What do they spend on production? Is it a large percentage? Listen, it's the production cost and usually also keep in mind, not just salaries and everything, traveling to specific locations.

With AI, you do not need to go to specific locations. Traveling is expensive.
You can create any location.

You know, in Game of Thrones, one scene to shot one scene somewhere in Scotland and bought the team with shoppers just for like a few seconds. Think about that.

So even if you can do this shot, how lucrative it's going to be, how like the profit going to look at the end of the day, that's the main question. So that's something that we can save.

That being said, even getting results quite fast and analyze, you know, there's a lot of aspects about how movie making with AI is going to look like in the near future.

I don't think, as I mentioned, I don't think we need to do 100% AI a movie, but think about a concept of creating everything in AI and then watching it for a second and said, okay, scene number 50, scene number 80, and scene number 95.

we're going to replace them with real shooting. And that's it.
We're trying to do a reverse engineering to this industry, trying to bring a different approach.

You still need to go and shoot something that will make sense because it's going to look better with real

shooting.

But hey, make everything in AI and then decide what you want to do and add vice versa. Yeah, probably less risky if you do it that way, too.
Oh, yeah. Cheaper for sure.
Yeah, way cheaper.

Wow, I really like this. Really cool.
You also got, you guys also have Arcana Academy, right? Yeah. What's up?

So, as we started to discuss about the industry and not just like filmmakers, generally the industry, there's there's a lot of fear from AI.

And there's a lot of, you know, I invited a few friends in, I'm based in Hollywood and I invited a few friends for our like, you know, a premiere of a few AI movies that we made. And it cuts into two.

The one that said super excited and want to watch that. And the one that said, I can't support that.
That's going to take my, you know, position and ruin my industry.

We realize that we have to educate people into the process.

Not just educate them by letting them know that it's still in control and the creative process is still there, but also letting them know how can they do it by themselves.

So, these two verticals about ease the way into the AI world as well as giving you the right tools to create yourself.

Literally, my daughter, she's nine years old. She can jump on the platform in like she jumps on the platform in 10 minutes and start creating.
Wow. Right? It's so easy, it's so intuitive.

The flow is make so much sense. You can choose any path that you want, text to image, image to image, image to video, video to video, name it.
And obviously sound, audio, things like that.

Super simples.

That's the point that we realize that we need to educate people. Now, that being said, keep in mind, creative process with Gen AI is not just filmmaker.
Okay. So you can make films, of course.

You can do commercials. You can design.

You can do specific

storyboard into, you know, cut storyboard into real images and move them into motion. So think about the opportunity and the variety of things that you can do with Gen AI tools.

And when we realized the use cases are so broad, we decided that that's going to be the best way to help people onboard.

We'll include a link to that in the video. That's really cool.
Are you concerned with deep fakes at all?

I'm concerned with deep fake.

Not about deep fake in Arcana. I'm concerned about where the tech could lead us.
And at some extent, not the deep fake itself. I'm concerned that people will not believe anyone.

That's my main concern.

Because if

President Trump is talking right now and someone will say, hey, it's not real Trump, although it is real Trump, that's the main issue that I'm concerned about.

Here in Arcana, we're safeguarding our users and

our ecosystem totally from that. You cannot duplicate someone without the permission, specific permission.

The D2C side of Arcana, you can't even touch brands or faces that are not just like Brad Pitt or someone very famous but anyone that is on the public domain our system will identify that the face is existing there and will not let you use that wow right um interesting i got a few friends that are famous not a historia but famous and i i couldn't create anything with their uh really with their pictures i had to jump on the enterprise side of orcana and then with the right license you can actually duplicate that wow yeah we're trying to we're trying to safeguard everything um respect yeah yeah yeah because hey um it could get crazy real quick it's not just can get crazy it also can have a lot of better reputation for companies that hey right you know you're not policing your users they can do whatever they want to and i'm getting some really believable ads lately about like fake joe rogan doing promoting products or stuff like that it's really believable yeah yeah um i think i i think that in our stage you can still identify if it's fake or not um it's getting close though i'd say i'd say like you and i can identify but our grandparents

can't. 100%.
100%.

And I think as the movement of AI is like keep shifting and evolving on a daily basis, I think the next, the next, the current startup that dealing with AI will not deal with a new AI engine.

They will deal with how to verify or give a stamp into an AI that that's genuine or AI.

Okay, that's happening already in LLM that they recognize if it's been written with AI, it's going to be the same. Yes, the only social media platforms are making you disclose if you're AI now.

You have to put a stamp of watermark.

And I think those regulations with the executive act of AI, what happened in the EU as well as here, I think it's getting compliance and

it's getting there. Yeah, the EU is pretty strict on AI laws.
Oh, yeah, right, yeah.

Must be tough to do stuff over there. It's not tough.
It's just like, you know, you're a bit more restricted on that aspect.

I think the U.S. is getting there as well.
And

I think the industry is in a good place. Bad actors, always going to be bad.

Any industry. Yeah, name it.
And they're going to be there. You can see the pharmaceutical that, you know, copying, like, right, and selling you kind of, you know, products that

never been under FDA. You see that.
You see that all over. We just need to be careful with that.
And we are kind of trying to put a lot of focus on that.

Where can people watching this find Arcana and keep up with you? So Arcana, ArcanaLabs.ai, for sure.

There's a link there to the arcana academy as well jump there's you know top-notch instructors and you can take any course learn how to do um starting from commercial up to design and definitely you know making a film um

we also have like youtube channel that have tons of free tutorials

tons of free tutorials um

and yeah perfect we'll link it below thanks for coming on man good luck tomorrow for sure thank you so much see you guys

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