夜雨聆风Dear CCNUers，
在AI迅速发展的今天，
文字、图像甚至电影都可以被一键生成，
人类的创造力还重要吗？
真正打动人的作品，
从来不只是因为技术新奇，
而是因为其中有真实的经历、
独特的想法和个人表达。
今天的演讲者Mick Mahler
将带我们走进AI影像创作的世界，
看看当一切都变得可能时，
创作者如何守住自己的叙事与想象力。
I've always been drawn to the uncanny -- the slightly creepy. I make movies about spiders playing jazz on their webs, or cockroaches building a rocket to fly to the moon and explore the universe. I love finding the human in what most people find a bit creepy. So when the first AI images like this appeared, I was not creeped out. I was really curious. What new ways of filmmaking could this unlock?
I started a YouTube channel to find out. Some of my early experiments were nature documentaries generated using one of the earliest AI-video models. It was so early that it couldn't even remember what happened half a second ago, which is why it looks like planet Earth on acid -- I imagine, I mean, I wouldn't know. My favorite early project, though, was using, back at the time, cutting-edge AI tools to generate the story, the 3D models and even the animation to create a sequel to my favorite Pixar movie, "Ratatouille" .
Not exactly Hollywood, I know, but I really loved pushing these tools to their limits to see where they'd break. And as you can see -- they broke pretty fast. But now AI can make almost anything I can imagine, and it's getting better and easier to use every single day. That's amazing, but also kind of terrifying, right? I mean, what happens when everything becomes possible? Will anyone be able to just prompt a Hollywood blockbuster now? Or will we drown in an ocean of meaningless AI-generated content -- what we now call “AI slop.”
演讲者把AI影像当成一种新的创作入口。他本来就喜欢那些有点怪诞、甚至让人不适的题材，所以早期AI视频里那些不稳定、失真、滑稽的效果，反而激发了他的兴趣。于是他开始不断尝试，用AI生成纪录片、动画和电影片段。虽然这些作品离真正成熟的电影还很远，但正是在这些“不完美”里，他看到了AI影像创作的可能性。
I'm actually more optimistic. And to show you why, I brought three projects that really inspired me. When a new AI model was released that could transform audio clips into animation, filmmakers from Berlin went out into the streets and interviewed pedestrians about their meat consumption, and then they used this AI model to transform their voices into this:
I'd like to be a vegetarian. It affects my health. But yeah, I do feel better when I eat it.
Alien 2: We need the meat because of our brains. Those things that are coming from the meat is helping the brains.
Now, a lot of people are creating these over-the-top sci-fi movie trailers with explosions and stuff with AI. And I get that. That's a lot of fun. But this stood out to me because it's not that. It's rooted in reality. It's a simple idea with a funny twist. And most importantly, it tells a story. That's how I like to approach my AI projects, too.
随着AI工具越来越成熟，创作者几乎可以把脑海中的任何画面变成影像。这当然令人兴奋，但也带来了新的焦虑：当人人都能用提示词生成大片时，我们会不会被大量空洞、廉价的AI内容淹没？演讲者并没有简单地唱衰AI。他认为，真正有价值的AI作品，不在于画面有多炫、技术有多新，而在于它是否扎根现实，是否有清晰的想法，是否真的讲出了一个故事。
Earlier this year, I felt really burnt out from sitting at my computer all day long, testing all these new AI models. I started to feel a bit like Gregor Samsa from Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." You know, the book about the guy who turns into this beetle creature. Well, inspired by that, I went outside and photographed real beetles, and then used these photos to train my own AI character model of this beetle. I then wrote an alternative ending for the story where Gregor, instead of dying alone miserably, reconnects with nature and learns that there's more to life than work.We then just went out into the woods and filmed this on an iPhone. And using this beetle model, I was able to transform myself into Gregor with just a few clicks.
演讲者分享了一个很有意思的创作经历：因为长期坐在电脑前测试AI模型，他感到疲惫、麻木，于是联想到卡夫卡《变形记》中的格里高尔。后来，他走到户外拍摄真实的甲虫，再用这些素材训练AI模型，把自己变成故事里的“甲虫人”。这个例子最打动人的地方在于，AI并不是凭空替他完成创作，而是帮助他把个人感受、文学想象和现实素材连接起来。技术只是工具，真正的起点仍然是人的想法。
Meanwhile, people are now creating entire movies on their laptops. There's this growing community of filmmakers pushing the boundaries of AI, and to them, sharing how they made it matters as much as the final movie. And I think that openness is really cool. It really invites anyone to come in and join and start creating their own movies. So this is where we are right now. Soon anyone will be able to tell any story without technical limitations.
So what happens when everything becomes possible? I think, yes, we're going to see amazing new aesthetics, new narrative forms we've never imagined and stories from people who couldn't find their audience before. But we are also going to see -- and we are already seeing -- a lot more trash: low-effort AI content to cut costs, deepfakes, misinformation [and] AI slop.
演讲者承认，AI会带来全新的美学和叙事方式，也会让更多普通人拥有讲故事的能力。但与此同时，低质量AI内容、深度伪造和虚假信息也会越来越多。在这样的环境里，真正能被记住的反而不是“用了AI”这件事，而是作品有没有自己的想法、有没有投入、有没有独特的表达。那些靠新奇感走红的AI潮流可能很快退去，但真正有生命力的故事不会。
But I think in that ocean of AI slop, authenticity stands out more than ever. Originality stands out. I think effort stands out. Remember the Studio Ghibli trend, when everyone turned themselves into these anime characters? It was everywhere online for a few weeks, then very quickly vanished because novelty creates hype, but gets boring fast. And I too was drawn to AI for the novelty, but the more perfect and easy to use these tools become, the more bored I am actually by the technology itself, and the more excited I become about the real question: What stories are we going to tell now? Because filmmakers were never remembered for their tools -- they were remembered for their stories, for their ability to move audiences, for their vision.
But I think here's also the challenge, because the tools always kind of shaped that vision, right? When we didn't have sound, title cards became a whole art form. CGI is too expensive? Maybe we need to actually build a part of that set? Early AI looks weird and creepy? Lean into that and make abstract nightmare fuel to make people laugh. Now those constraints are fading, and to avoid getting lost, you have to be more sure than ever about what it is you want to create. I think when everything becomes possible, nothing matters more than your vision.
过去，电影创作常常受到技术限制的影响：没有声音，就发展出字幕卡；特效太贵，就搭建真实场景；早期AI画面怪异，就把这种怪异变成风格。可当技术限制越来越少，创作者反而更容易迷失。演讲者提醒我们，AI让“实现”变得简单，但不会自动赋予作品意义。当几乎一切都可以被生成时，最重要的反而是创作者是否拥有清楚的判断和愿景。
So here is how I work now for my newer projects. For my newest short film about a man who changes size with his confidence, we went story first, tool second. We knew that AI would make the visual effects possible, so we just wrote it, went out and shot it, and then later we figured out our own AI workflow. [We] built an open-source model that you can run for free on your own computer -- it's very, very nerdy. That allowed us to control every creative decision. And that's super important with AI -- to keep that control -- because a lot of these AI tools will try to make creative decisions for you. Don't let them do that. Think about the story only you can tell. Make it weird, make it unique, so that no AI could generate it on its own. And if you want, use AI as a tool to reach that vision, but never to replace it.Now go make something cool.
演讲者认为，在AI创作中，应该“故事优先，工具其次”。先确定想讲什么，再去寻找合适的AI方法，而不是让AI工具牵着创作走。他特别提醒，很多AI工具会不知不觉替创作者做决定，但创作者不能把主动权完全交出去。真正值得讲的故事，应该带有个人的痕迹，甚至可以怪一点、特别一点。AI可以帮助我们更接近自己的想象，但不应该取代我们自己的想象。
END
文案：陈业成
审校：陈奥丽 韩玉乾
播音：陈业成
排版：董奕萱
图片来源：TED官网
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