A scene from The Ape Squad’s advert marketing campaign for Roborock, made by synthetic intellegence (AI) / Courtesy of The Ape Squad
As generative synthetic intelligence (AI) video instruments race forward, Kim Younger-ki, CEO and director of Seoul-based AI studio The Ape Squad, is betting on a counterintuitive thesis: The extra highly effective AI turns into, the extra indispensable human administrators will likely be.
For the CEO, who additionally has an in depth background in conventional advert manufacturing, AI shouldn’t be a shortcut to cheaper content material by way of changing artistic labor. Reasonably, he views it’s a device that enables administrators to implement their artistic intent with better constancy than conventional live-action shoots.
Kim Younger-ki, CEO of The Ape Squad / Courtesy of The Ape Squad
“I truly put in additional of my very own time when directing AI movies than when directing live-action,” Kim stated throughout an interview with The Korea Occasions on the studio’s places of work in Gangnam District, Seoul. “With AI work, I’ve to be concerned in each single step personally, dealing with many elements one after the other … That made us assume loads about the place to seek out the correct stability, how a lot is decreased and what we acquire in return.”
The Ape Squad began as an AI-related R&D workforce at Kim’s live-action advert studio House Monster Content material. It spun off to turn out to be a separate firm in 2024, working a totally in-house AI studio, dealing with planning, picture technology, video manufacturing and post-production beneath one roof.
Using AI in promoting manufacturing can considerably scale back prices, reducing bills to as little as one-twentieth of a comparable live-action funds, however Kim is adamant that financial savings shouldn’t be the tip aim, and protecting the stability to about one-third to one-fifth of live-action prices.
“The hot button is how successfully we are able to reallocate these financial savings to reinforce the work’s high quality, creativity and the general enchantment of the content material. We will reinvest, whether or not totally or partially, into extra artistic elements,” he stated, noting such an strategy units the studio aside from different AI studios.
He defined the studio organizes AI tasks as a round-table the place AI artists, technicians and administrators work as one workforce from growing the content material’s idea by way of the ultimate product.
The studio garnered consideration with its AI reconstruction of the Okay-pop duo Deux’s member Kim Sung-jae, who died shortly after his debut within the Nineties. Utilizing photos of the singer, the studio made the AI-produced music video for the duo’s new launch “RISE,” marking a return after 28 years.
In contrast to modern celebrities with huge picture datasets, Kim Sung-jae offered a novel problem.
“With well-known celebrities, text-to-video is comparatively straightforward as a result of there are such a lot of pictures. However Kim Sung-jae handed away proper after his debut, so there are not any later photos,” the CEO defined. “Everybody has a special reminiscence of what he appears to be like like … We struggled fairly a bit to seek out essentially the most becoming respectful and emotional level in between.”
Photographs of singer Lee Hyun-do, high, and late singer Lee Sung-jae, recreated by AI / Courtesy of The Ape Squad
Reasonably than pushing realism to its limits, the studio made a deliberate directorial option to reveal the reconstructed face solely at key moments at first and the tip of the video, filling in between with a half-masked face.
“At this stage, it’s inevitable that some traces of AI stay seen. So we determined to embrace it by constructing a narrative that might spotlight it in essentially the most significant manner,” he stated. “As a substitute of continually exposing an imperfect face, we targeted on moments that might evoke nostalgia.”
The CEO has made historical past by turning into the primary director in Korea to win a grand prize for each live-action and AI advert campaigns on the Korea Promoting Awards. Based mostly on his experience in each areas, Kim sees rising potential in hybrid productions that mix live-action footage with AI-generated environments.
The studio is about to launch an AI-produced anthology movie “Code: G,” on Dec. 24, for which it directed one in every of 5 brief movies that mix live-action and AI generated manufacturing.
“We’ve been pondering loads about how this business can stay sustainable, and as AI expertise advances, what course we should always pursue. That’s why subsequent yr we plan to discover extra hybrid approaches, an space we consider may turn out to be a significant differentiator for us,” he stated.
For Kim, the talk over AI within the artistic area recollects previous shifts, such because the transfer from movie to digital, when early resistance ultimately gave technique to new requirements as artists discovered to adapt whereas protecting their imaginative and prescient.
“Reasonably than opposing it blindly, I believe we have to give attention to how one can apply it successfully in our personal manner,” he stated.
