AMC Networks is teaming up with AI company Runway

Marketing teams and pre-visualization artists working with AMC Networks might need to be on their toes. The company has reached an agreement to generate marketing images and pre-visualize projects before they enter production using Runway’s AI tech.

Some other Hollywood companies — such as Lionsgate and Harmony Korine’s unfortunately named EDGELRD — have agreed deals with Runway. Other studios are said to be testing models from various gen AI companies. According to The Hollywood Reporter, however, AMC is the first cable company to agree a deal with Runway.

The publication notes that AMC’s profits dropped by nearly half to $63 million in its most recent earnings report. It’s been suggested that the company is looking to reduce the costs of producing and marketing projects without letting quality drop.

At least for the time being, AMC is not planning to include AI-generated imagery in its shows. However, the company that brought the likes of Mad Men and Breaking Bad to the world thinks it’ll be able to sell viewers on shows and films using AI-generated images. This is seen as a way for the company’s networks to "trot out a range of promotional material without the need to spend added time and money trying to capture images with a physical shoot," per THR. AI imagery will also be used in pre-production, ostensibly to help showrunners determine what may or may not work in their projects before filming starts.

In both use cases, AMC will be looking to lower costs by reducing the level of human labor that’s traditionally needed in those arenas. To do so, it will be relying on tech from a company that reportedly trained its AI models on thousands of YouTube videos — as well as pirated versions of copyrighted movies — without first obtaining permission. It is not clear whether AMC has given Runway the green light to use its shows and films for AI training purposes, as Lionsgate has.

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