Indonesia's film industry embraces AI to make Hollywood-style movies for cheap(restofworld.org)
restofworld.org
Indonesia's film industry embraces AI to make Hollywood-style movies for cheap
https://restofworld.org/2025/indonesia-ai-movies/
6 comments
Mainstream Hollywood is using generative AI all the time. Effects like de-aging an actor, to portray a younger version of themselves, is exactly that.
The only reason generative AI isn't used more is because the results are often poor. Companies have been promising things like automatic rotoscoping for some time. It sort of works.
The only reason generative AI isn't used more is because the results are often poor. Companies have been promising things like automatic rotoscoping for some time. It sort of works.
> Mainstream Hollywood can’t use genAI in a way that doesn’t get push back because like every other intentionally built industry, it’s primarily focused on maintaining labor infrastructure for people who join the “entertainment industry.”
Agree. But Hollywood is dying, both in a similar fashion and for a similar reason as the music industry. It grew up around physical content limitations - people needed to go to theaters to see movies. The Internet destroyed that limitation.
> it’s primarily focused on maintaining labor infrastructure for people who join the “entertainment industry.”
Draconian IP laws are part of this. Interestingly, if look you at things from the late 90's over the 2000's and 2010's, this factor didn't make the Internet less attractive as an entertainment option, but instead made non-celebrity culture something more people chose and cared about. Hence the rise of YouTube and social media.
> History indicates that transactional consumers don’t care about any supply chain, value steam etc…or labor share of a market.
They don't, but people are tired of Hollywood franchise reboots. There was something on here about how anime is popular because it's actually doing new franchises instead of the same rehashed stuff, and it was absolutely right.
GenAI, in the sense of being something used by financed producers, assuming it gets good enough for people to not notice too much, will much more easily fall into that trap.
The real future is me, in 2045, signing on to Netflix, providing a couple inputs like talking about the type of movie I want to see, maybe a webcam recording me demonstrating some things in addition to just speaking what I want, and a GenAI generates one for me right then and there. Real people as celebrites won't exist anymore, memes will be the new celebrites: they'll all be characters other people request to see in generated movies, and their lifecycle will be about the same as Tiktok memes today. Theaters by this time will be bulldozed and have become mini nuclear power plants, with big NVIDIA logos on them.
Agree. But Hollywood is dying, both in a similar fashion and for a similar reason as the music industry. It grew up around physical content limitations - people needed to go to theaters to see movies. The Internet destroyed that limitation.
> it’s primarily focused on maintaining labor infrastructure for people who join the “entertainment industry.”
Draconian IP laws are part of this. Interestingly, if look you at things from the late 90's over the 2000's and 2010's, this factor didn't make the Internet less attractive as an entertainment option, but instead made non-celebrity culture something more people chose and cared about. Hence the rise of YouTube and social media.
> History indicates that transactional consumers don’t care about any supply chain, value steam etc…or labor share of a market.
They don't, but people are tired of Hollywood franchise reboots. There was something on here about how anime is popular because it's actually doing new franchises instead of the same rehashed stuff, and it was absolutely right.
GenAI, in the sense of being something used by financed producers, assuming it gets good enough for people to not notice too much, will much more easily fall into that trap.
The real future is me, in 2045, signing on to Netflix, providing a couple inputs like talking about the type of movie I want to see, maybe a webcam recording me demonstrating some things in addition to just speaking what I want, and a GenAI generates one for me right then and there. Real people as celebrites won't exist anymore, memes will be the new celebrites: they'll all be characters other people request to see in generated movies, and their lifecycle will be about the same as Tiktok memes today. Theaters by this time will be bulldozed and have become mini nuclear power plants, with big NVIDIA logos on them.
It really makes you wonder what the media landscape would look like right now if this tech had been ready closer to Netflix's "become HBO faster than HBO can become us" phase.
> This is actually how disruption works
They are not disrupting shit, in practice or in theory with current ai
Sora 2 is nothing but a meme machine. Stephen Hawking as a battlebot is funny, nothing about it is realistic vs movies.
How would special effects or lower costs make their movies disruptively more popular? [1]
If you want 'real' disruption, Indonesians should be working out how to dub their films using AI. This is cash and a soft power.
[1] Indonesian top rated, The Raid, made by the Welsh Gareth Evans. - https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?num_votes=5000,&country_o...
They are not disrupting shit, in practice or in theory with current ai
Sora 2 is nothing but a meme machine. Stephen Hawking as a battlebot is funny, nothing about it is realistic vs movies.
How would special effects or lower costs make their movies disruptively more popular? [1]
If you want 'real' disruption, Indonesians should be working out how to dub their films using AI. This is cash and a soft power.
[1] Indonesian top rated, The Raid, made by the Welsh Gareth Evans. - https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?num_votes=5000,&country_o...
Hollywood didn’t exist in 1700. Now it’s one of the largest industrial employers in the world with massive Unions and solidarity movements (which are good imo).
Mainstream Hollywood can’t use genAI in a way that doesn’t get push back because like every other intentionally built industry, it’s primarily focused on maintaining labor infrastructure for people who join the “entertainment industry.”
Indonesia doesn’t have an entire multi million person “entertainment industry” to protect, and “technology” has now lowered the barrier of entry to “hollwood style” movies.
The question you should be asking is: Do movie consumers, ultimately representing the voting public for entertainment labor supply, support the industry of entertainment or do they not care and just want something to distract them?
History indicates that transactional consumers don’t care about any supply chain, value steam etc…or labor share of a market. This is the entire goal of transactionalisn - alienating consumers from producers through intermediaries.
So if using generative technology genuinely shifts consumer preferences then thats what’s going to happen.
The only way out of all of these problems is if the plurality of people choose to consume based on the holistic approach to understanding externalities, system dynamics and human community development.
Never going to happen.
I’ll be interested to see what these Indonesians come up with.