Film and TV's evolution towards AI
The medium of film has always been about showing audiences something they have never seen before. From the first visual tricks to today's digital universes, the ambition has been the same: to create worlds that can amaze, surprise and draw the audience into the story.
Visual effects became a crucial part of the language of film early on. If you look at the biggest box office hits in film history, they are almost all built around adventure, science fiction and fantasy – genres where animation and visual effects not only support the story, but make it possible.
With Jurassic Park In 1993, a crucial shift occurred. Computer-generated effects went from experimental to standard, and filmmakers gained access to a whole new creative toolbox. It changed not only how films were made – but what stories could be told.
Today, CGI is ubiquitous. Sometimes visible, often invisible – but almost always crucial. Digital has become a natural extension of the camera and the set design.
For more than 30 years, the film industry has created enormous amounts of digital imagery. It is this accumulated creativity that now forms the basis of artificial intelligence. AI learns from decades of human image creation and makes it possible to produce visually complex worlds faster and cheaper than ever before.
It changes the rules of the game. Where digital universes previously required large teams and long production times, AI can now perform large parts of the work in record time. Humans are not disappearing from the process – but their role is changing. We are therefore on the threshold of another major shift in visual storytelling.
The presentation draws a clear line from the early technologies of film history to today's AI tools and looks at how artificial intelligence may shape the future of film and television production.
Claus Bülow Christensen has followed this development closely since the breakthrough of CGI in the 1990s. Based on both historical perspective and contemporary practice, the presentation takes the audience on a timeline journey through the development of visual effects – up to the moment when AI truly becomes a new co-creator of the world of film.
