RealmIQ: SESSIONS with RENARD T. JENKINS

In this episode of RealmIQ: SESSIONS, Curt interviews Renard T. Jenkins, President and CEO of I2A2 Technologies, Studios, and Labs, discusses AI’s evolving role in Hollywood, the media and entertainment industries, and the creative process. Renard shares his journey from post-production to leading AI-driven innovations in media supply chains, automation, and content engagement. He provides insights into the changing Hollywood landscape, the impact of AI on animation, VFX, and voice acting, and how creatives can embrace AI to enhance storytelling rather than replace human-driven artistry.

Topics Discussed:

1. Renard’s Background & AI Journey – From post-production at Turner Broadcasting to leading AI-driven solutions.
2. AI in Hollywood – How the industry’s perspective on AI has evolved from fear to cautious adoption.
3. AI Studios & Emerging Trends – The rise of AI-focused studios like Promise, Staircase, and the impact of AI on production pipelines.
4. VFX & Animation – The disruption in the industry and how AI is reshaping workflows.
5. Voice Acting & AI – The ethical concerns and technical advancements in synthetic voice generation.
6. The Future of Hollywood – How AI might reshape the business model for studios, content distribution, and storytelling.
7. Creative-Centered AI – The importance of keeping creatives in control of AI tools.
8. Blockchain & DRM – The potential of blockchain in IP protection and content monetization.
9. AI’s Role in Film & Streaming Disruptions – Can AI be a savior for Hollywood’s current challenges?
10. The Future of Independent Studios – Why smaller studios might rise in prominence while traditional ones shift towards distribution.
11. Inclusive Innovation – The philosophy behind I2A2’s development approach, ensuring AI tools serve real creative needs.

Pull Quotes with Attributions:

• "I'm a creative first and a curious engineer second." – Renard T. Jenkins
• "AI isn't replacing jobs; it's creating new ones." – Renard T. Jenkins
• "VFX and animation will push AI adoption forward more than any other sector in Hollywood." – Curt Doty
• "True creatives need to take the reins of AI, or we'll stay stuck in this AI slop era." – Curt Doty
• "The big studios are going to shift from content creators to content distributors." – Renard T. Jenkins
• "Every technology change has promised efficiency, but quality storytelling remains a human endeavor." – Renard T. Jenkins
• "AI alone won’t save Hollywood, but independent studios will rise and redefine the industry." – Renard T. Jenkins
• "Innovation without purpose is just noise—real impact comes when creatives push AI forward." – Curt Doty

Renard's Company

https://i2a2.io/

Transcript

Welcome, everybody. Let's get into it.  We are in our season three, and I am so excited to introduce today's guest. And that is Renard T. Jenkins. He's the president and CEO of I2A2 Technologies, Studios and Labs, a software development consulting firm specializing in the creation of ethically responsible tools, solutions and experiences for marketing and research, education and healthcare industries.

Utilizing both emerging and traditional technologies. He is also an experienced and executive in the technology film and television radio industries. He sits on a number of corporate boards and currently serves as vice president of the Hollywood Professional Association, a media past board of exceptional minds.

He is also an active member of the Television Academy and the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.  He has held executive roles across the technology, media and entertainment industry. Wow, that's quite a pedigree. I am so glad you're with us. It's taken a while for us to get together to have this conversation, but welcome Renard and nice to meet you.

Face to face here virtually.  Well, thank you, Curt. There's 1 quick correction. I want to make sure we get in there. I'm the immediate past president of the Society of motion picture and television engineers and I am on the board of exceptional minds, which is where I am. And yeah, it has been quite a journey for us to have this conversation.

I'm, I'm excited to actually speak with you.  Cool. Well, let's start up, you know, the conversation around AI, the shows about AI, and I've been following you for months, if almost a year, at least on, on, on LinkedIn. And I, I know you're an advocate and an optimist and kind of a. Beacon, certainly in the Hollywood community.

And I appreciate that. So why don't you just tell me about your journey? Obviously, you come from technology entertainment, but how have you come to embrace a I, which can be a very controversial subject in Hollywood these days.  Well, you know, it can be controversial, and I think a lot of that comes from a misunderstanding about what it is and what it has capability to do.

I came into this space man. It's been a while. Actually, I started to really you know, in the research and development teams but You know, very early in my career. That was something that I leaned in towards. I was a person who was working in post-production. I tell people all the time, I'm a creative first and a curious engineer.

Second, I've always been a creative and I feel like I always will be. Technology is what I use in order to get my creativity from in my head and out into the public. So very early in my career, I was, you know. Curious. So, I would, I would, I would push the limits of whatever was in front of me, whatever tool was in front of me.

I wanted to see how far I could go with it. Having an engineering background helps that. And so, you know, when I was running postproduction back when I was a part of the Turner broadcasting family, I was working on how to actually move them from SD to HD. And how to move them into a digital world.

And, but I was also, you know, looking at some of the tools that we had in front of us and trying to figure out how do we actually bring all of them together? How do we actually make this a much more efficient way to work? And that's where I started really honing in on designing what would eventually be called a media supply chain.

And so, I started that after a course that I took where they were teaching us about the theory behind Kaizen. Which is continuous improvement, and they were using Toyota and Nikon, and I think some of the other companies that, that we've all heard of as examples of companies that had put Kaizen into place.

Well, yeah, yeah, Japanese companies and, and as, as they were, as, as I, as they were showing us the use cases, they were also showing us the metrics. From when they started using Kaizen to where they are now and the amount of efficiency that they were able to gain. One of the things that stuck out to me was that they, they constantly looked at everything in a multi linear fashion.

It was not a bilinear fashion. They were taking things and saying very, you know, like this particular process. Has multiple ways that it could go, but what's the most efficient way for it to go? And let's dive into that and then let's build upon that. And so that encouraged me, postproduction, it’s a pipeline.

It's, you know, you're bringing it in. You're, you're, you're, you're adding pieces and parts. You're changing, you're moving, and then you're, you're outputting a product. And so, I started thinking of it that way, and that led me to automation. And once I got into automation.  Of course, you lean into machine learning.

What a lot of people don't realize is that, you know, what we are doing right now is the result of computational power.  AI, and machine learning, and automation, and scripting, and all of these things, they have been around for decades. And we've been using them, but we just haven't been calling them the same thing that we're calling them now.

So, for me, it was, you know, all the way back until, like, 2003.  I was already in the space of using machine learning and using automation.  Awesome. Well, that's interesting because you know, people think that AI is new and maybe, you know, two years old which was really the birth of generative AI. Yes.

It's a label that is associated with general AI, which includes machine learning and, and many, many things. Yes. So, so I appreciate the background. You being in the middle of Hollywood what is the mindset on AI at this point? And, you know, there's controversy, you know, on both sides. It's a multifaceted issue.

There's IP infringement issues. There's adoption issues creative issues and you being creative. And I appreciate the fact that you're a curious engineer. Cause I've always felt that curiosity has been that thing. That's propelled my creative career over decades because you know. What's that shiny object over there?

I want to get bored of this stuff. It's like, let's go over there and play. So, I think that's what keeps creatives like us young. I agree. I agree. Even though you have a gray beard, I have gray hair. I think you're still young, young in spirit. So, tell me what's the temperature mindset of Hollywood on this issue?

Yeah, you know, that is a it is a moving target, but I will say that,  you know, from where we were last year at this time and, and I, I gave a keynote at the TV academy where I equated our progress with AI to, to sort of like AI being a toddler and we had a lot of You know, we had a lot of opportunity to teach that toddler what to do and what not to do.

And we also had people who were looking at the toddler as if it was in the midst of the terrible twos. And I think we have moved in Hollywood a little bit further along. I just spoke at the HPA and, and, and I equated it to us being at that tween to teenage space where the tool in itself is extremely powerful and has a mind of its own.

However, it still needs guidance. And I think with Hollywood, what we're finally starting to see is that people are starting to embrace the power of the tool.  And there is a lot less talk about the tool actually replacing jobs. And it's taught, you know, there's more talk about the jobs that are being created.

By these tools, there's also you know, the, the, the rise of AI studios, which is also helping you know, you've got studios like promise and studios like staircase that are that are coming along.  And showing people that this is a viable tool for creation and not just, you know, someone sitting at a prompt and saying, okay, I want you to output this image or output this I'll put this image and make it move or something like that.

There are controls that are actually being developed now, and that also helps for adoption and integration into existing pipelines. But the big thing is that it's changing. The pipelines for production, especially in the world of animation and in the world of VFX, those two are going to be impacted most quickly by this, this change of technology, the other area that is being affected both positively and, and, and I have to be honest, negatively.

Is the area in which voice actors’ dwell right now, there's a lot of work that's going on with voice and trying to get voice to sound as human as possible trying to get voice to have emotions and things of that nature and individuals are using those tools. To replace voice actors.

However, they are not they're not as good as, as people would want them to be just yet. They're getting there, but the key to that is keeping the actor and keeping the human integrated as a part of the process for all of these tools is where Hollywood is, is looking right now. And, and I think having that theme is, is a good thing.

For the industry also leaning in to how to properly use these tools is another part. So, we are seeing some adoption. We are seeing a lot of exploration. We are also seeing you know, people are being a little bit more curious. And, you know, maybe that's the theme of our conversation today, but people are being a little bit more curious.

My, my team at I2A2 we did a survey. And we just actually closed the first round of that survey and some of the, the survey in itself was, we wanted to look at creatives and ask creatives, how are you using, or are you using AI tools? The majority of the respondents they, they were actually using the tools, and we did actually see an uptick in the number of writers who were using the tools to stimulate ideas.

But not to do writing. They were very, very clear about that in the free space that we offered individuals to give us their opinion. Most of the writers were very clear. I can use it to generate an idea, or I can use it to structure an idea, but the, I, but the bulk of the ideas and the bulk of the writing is coming from me.

And then there was also the fear of using these tools and whether or not the information that you're putting in. Is being used to continue to train the model. Those are the areas. So, so you, you do have that balance right now of fear and curiosity, and it's extremely encouraging. I think when we think about how people can adopt these tools.

And it is extremely concerning when you hear individuals who probably don't have the best understanding of how these tools work and what they can actually do, making bold statements about efficiency and thinking of efficiency in the mindset of reducing. Head count, right? Right. Every technique. Yeah.

Every technology change, right? Yeah. You know, every technology change has made that promise. You know, they, they've all made that promise like, Oh, we're going to be able to reduce. But what you find is that in order to keep the quality level of the craft that we have chosen as our career, it’s a collaborative effort.

And it doesn't just require machines and tools. It requires human beings. Absolutely. And that's a process I called creative centered AI versus human centered AI. Yeah. Human centered design, right? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. It's been a, you know, a movement for years. Mm hmm. If not a decade, if more. And I, I think that creative centered AI. 

Is a mantra that puts creative people at the center and in the driver's seat of using these tools. And I'm far more interested in what a seasoned film editor of 30 years working on major movies, how they're going to use this technology to empower themselves versus. Some guy sitting in a basement in Pacoima who doesn't have a job and is just playing around and say, look, Ma, look what I made.

You know, I don't care about that AI slop, right? Which you see a lot of. Yeah. Yeah. I I'm more interested in true creatives. Really taking the reins here and taking this technology to the next level because without true creatives, we're going to stay in this slop era, and we've gone through at least a year of AI video slop.

And I think now that the true creatives, these AI studios that are popping up, I think we're finally seeing Not only kind of fantastic character representation and multi scenes, but also some emotion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That ultimately films evoke emotion from storytelling, which is a very human thing.

But I'm starting to see that. In some of these short AI films and that's what I'm excited about and this is really the only the beginning It's as bad as it's ever going to get right now. It's only going to get better you mentioned You know, before you go, before you go to the next thing, Curt, I got to tell you that that is exactly what's exciting about all of this.

That is really what's exciting about this. When you look at what promises the, the, the promise of promise studios, you know, you, you have Dave Clark is their creative their chief creative officer, and he is a filmmaker. You know, he's also a, a, a marketing he comes from the marketing field as well.

So, he has an incredible eye. When you look at some of the things that he created, even with earlier tools, it did exactly what you said. It was able to allow us to suspend our disbelief. It was able to allow us to be sort of pulled into the stories, even with trailers that he was creating that was happening.

And then you look at Paul, someone like Paul Trillo, you know, and Paul Trillo is just, I mean, he's going from live action to an animation and everything in between. And each one of his stories, they're elevating. What we're able to see, and they're elevating actually how we use the tools as well. You know, I see those two individuals as really leaders in, in sort of what you're saying.

They're real creatives who embrace the tools early, who are now pushing forward with where things can actually go. So it is, it's a wonderful time. For, for those individuals who also are creatives and they're storytellers, but they couldn't draw themselves out of a square box.  They can now use their stories and create images around those stories. 

And then they can work with someone else to help them put it all together. You know, it keeps the collaboration that is filmmaking. It is a multimodal complicated workflow. It is not to, Hey, I wanted this scene. It's one prompt and one and done. No. No, no, I'm, I'm working with I'm working with C Craig Patterson and, and we, it's a large group of us who are working on an animated short called Chickaboom.

And in order to create the character, because it is a hybrid version, it's a hybrid use of traditional animation tools and skill sets and AI and working with the stereo and Halon as, as, as the studios who are, who are helping us build all of this out. But in order for C Craig to get to the character, he had over a thousand prompts.

To get there. And that was after using hand drawn illustrations, you know? So, so like you said, this, this is not a one and done you, there's a process and there's a lot of work that goes into it. And I hope that as people realize how much work goes into making quality.  Content that the IP issues and the copyright issues and the trademark issues and all of those things that are sort of bubbling around that make studios and make IP owners nervous.

I hope that that will be resolved. Yeah, and go away. Yeah. I also want to give a mention to Zaheer Khan. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Please. Don't let me leave out Zaheer. Yeah. He's a leader as well. Doing amazing. Amazing. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Fascinating stuff. Oh, yeah, they're all, they're all exploring and, you know, it is tedious work.

So, the notion of, you know, studios saving money because this technology makes things happen faster is a, is a, is a lie.  It's a CFO's fever dream is what it is. Right. Yeah. So yeah, go ahead and make your own film, Mr.  CFO and good luck with training one team. You know, we, we, we can't, we can't, we can't fault them for wanting to be more efficient for wanting to save money for wanting to do all these things.

You can't really fault them, but what you can look at is where they.  You know, and I say, they, in the sense of any individual who thinks that you can cut your way to profitability at any time, it never works. It never has worked. That's not a business model that has been successful. The way you become successful is to create a product that people actually feel they have to have a part of.

And create, you know, and for us in the media and entertainment space, create an experience and a world that people feel that they have to be a part of. And when you do that, that is going to be successful.  Yeah, I appreciate the fact that you say world because I think, you know, multi-level storytelling and kind of cross platform storytelling is ripe for this technology.

Oh, yes.  you know, a linear movie is an entry point. It's one tentacle of what could be, you know, a whole ecosystem character. So, so, yeah. Yeah. So, I think that world building is important. I want to get back to the fact that video effects companies are going to be the most affected and we've seen that look at jellyfish and technicolor. 

Really, the demise of some of these studios that really. Their destruction or failure has nothing to do with AI.  No, no. And years of years of abuse and under bidding and competition and offshoring and, and now it's, you know, they're come up and says do, and, and they couldn't survive.  So, what are your thoughts about. 

That industry and even, even though, you know, there are AI studios popping up, they're not themselves as video effects houses that's, you know, specialize on, Hey, we got six scenes for this next movie that I used to work at the domain. And that was like, Hey, we got six scenes. Okay. And you're not doing the whole movie, but okay.

Six scenes. Great. Yeah.  So, what's the future there?  You know, Curt, that's tough to be very honest. I have a lot of friends in, in that particular area of the business. At one time I used to think that I wanted to actually own a VFX house because I'm so fascinated by the tech that goes into it and what you can actually create out of it.

You know, and then as I looked further into the business models that existed. And how they were set up you know, it was, it was almost set up to fail. It's a very difficult place to be. And you have to bid in order to get the job, but you know, you underbid and then you all of a sudden are underwater because you've got to deliver on the contract that you agreed to, whether you run out of money or not.

And so, it puts you in a very bad. position and it was, it's sad to see, you know, companies like Jellyfish and Technicolor go down because, you know, they were tentpoles in, in, in our industry. However, I'm optimistic. In the sense, just like what we were talking about with filmmakers, there are incredible VFX artists out there who putting their hands on the right tools.

And not all of those tools are going to be AI but using AI as long along with traditional tools and along with some things that we as normal human beings, because I always think of VFX artists as superheroes. You know, we normal human beings have not even thought of. These VFX artists are going to be able to take this technology and, and more, and I do believe that they're going to change the way that the industry looks at all of this, and they're going to be able to, to rise out of all of this and, and, and we're going to see even greater and more realistic VFX things happening because as the computational power gets stronger,  all of the traditional VFX computer, you know, CGI and all that kind of stuff is only going to get better.

And then we're adding on top the ability to you know, to use AI in a proper manner in the mix of that pipeline as well. That's going to increase their abilities and their skills as well. So, I am optimistic. And I, I really hope that every VFX artists that I know, and even the ones that extend out from them that I don't know, are able to, you know, get through this sort of this dark period. 

And to actually rebuild that particular vertical and department within our industry, because it's always going to be needed how it is sort of brought to fruition will be determined by the tools, but the skill set, just like we talked about with filmmakers, the skill set is what really matters.  Oh, yeah, and so that's interesting because I think what you're saying is.

The big conglomerates, right. May go by the wayside, but the individuals do the work of 10 people.  Yeah. And it's, these individuals could become enterprises themselves. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's the power of AI I believe. And so, I think it's mandatory that all those, you know visual effects artists certainly embrace it because that's the path forward.

Yeah. They've, they've got to lean in. They, they really do have to lean into it. And, and, you know, I, I have a feeling that most of them will, because when you look at the VFX community, most of them are people who are in no way afraid of technology. As a matter of fact, they, they are early adopters. They are, they are the folks who, who helped to develop some of these tools to be useful.

For, you know, for the normal folks, you know, within the media and entertainment space. So, so I can see them taking this and really running with it. And, and like you said, you know, we, we are, you know, you've heard everybody say the gig economy, the creator economy, you know, all these different terms to basically say free life.

And what we're going to see is people. You know, really taking the reins to this thing and making it work, we're, we're going to be very creative. People are going to take it and they're going to make it work. And it's going to be something more extraordinary than any 1 of us could imagine in our minds today. 

And that that's what it needs. That's the jolt Ai adoption needs right now. Yeah, is exactly that though that sector Specifically that sector. Yes, embrace and innovate It’s not the technology companies that are going to be the innovators. It's the people using it, you know, right? The tech, the tech, not, and this is no diss towards engineers who are developing the tech.

No, not at all. Yeah. It's really, it's saying, okay. And then, in the hands of people who have the imagination to say, I want to, I want to do this, how do I do it? And they tinker, right? Yeah. And they created an original workflow, multimodal, maybe someone platform, but you know, they had a vision. Right. You know, the, the, the, the big tech companies, they have a vision to beat out each other and they're just racing.

Right.  Innovation that's going straight up and, but they're not, they're not the true creatives it's going to be.  You know, the video effects industry actually, and the, and the movie industry. Video effects animation, you know, yeah. Video effects and animation are going to move all of this forward. And then you're going to have the storyteller step in and they're going to then take what the visual effects and the animation folks have done.

And they're going to move it a little bit further along. You know, the thing about thinks about development, the thing about innovation is.  Innovation for innovation's sake only works for the person who's actually innovating it, but innovation for the purpose of a greater cause, whether it is to, you know, increase the, the ability for us to rotoscope faster.

You know or increase the ability for us to be able to rig animated characters faster, those types of things. And those types of use cases are going to be the things that float to the top the rest of the tools that individuals are sitting in a corner and creating and not really reaching out to find out whether or not they're useful are going to probably turn into either parts or pieces of a larger. 

So, I never, I never liked to, like, I guess, I guess the best way to put it is when I'm speaking with my engineering team, what I always tell them is one, don't get so attached to your baby that no one else can actually help you raise it.  And the other thing is really kept in mind that when you are building something. 

Understand who you're building it for.  If you were building it for someone in the education space. Then we need to make sure that they are part of the process of development and design and determining what the goal and the mission is for it. And we call that inclusive innovation within our company and using inclusive innovation when we work with our customers, that is how we make sure that what we are building is actually what they are asking us to build. 

But when we're building things for ourselves, we still use inclusive innovation because we want to make sure that it's going to be something that's useful in whichever of the industries, we're building it for, you know, we may have a great idea, but it really takes the user. To make that idea useful.  Yeah.

And I, I love that term inclusive. Certainly, isn't a time when the country's facing a crisis in inclusivity. So yeah, I appreciate you keeping that alive in your own way. Yeah. So, we've talked about AI studios. And you know, there was, there's a mantra that's going on with certain companies and even on the marketing side, and they’re talking about positioning themselves as AI first, just like mobile first used to be. 

And I, I have a problem with that because I think if that's the leading message, then the perception on the other side of whoever's hearing that.  Oh, you just do things for cheaper because you're, you're using AI, right? And so, I'm just, what are your thoughts about, you know, an AI first methodology? If studios are positioning themselves as AI film studios or AI marketing studios, AI production studios, these are, it's all happening. 

Is that a race to the bottom? Or is, you know, you know, how do you, how do you not cheapen your product by, by saying, AI first.  Yeah. You know, I thought about this for a while and I'm so glad that you sent that particular question to me earlier because it gave me a chance to really think it through.

And when I was thinking about it, one of the things that I used to say you know, probably about four years ago, I was the person who was telling the industry to stop using the term AI because what we were doing at that time was not AI, it was machine learning. And I kept saying, stop using AI. That is not what we're doing.

It's machine learning. It's machine learning. I think what you're seeing right now is more, as you stated, a marketing ploy. With people saying AI I do know that with studios like Staircase and Promise, they are true AI studios because that is what they are doing. They are coming at it from that angle. 

When I think about traditional studios saying, Oh, we're going, you know, we're AI forward or we're AI first. I kind of raised an eyebrow because.  You have a hundred-year-old workflows within the film industry, and they're a hundred years old because they work.  And they work well, and they have, they have, they have provided for families for years and they have provided for studio profits for years. 

There's no way that any studio is going to just throw all of that out and now say, okay, I'm going to do everything AI.  That would be foolish. And that would be that would not only be foolish, but that would also be financially you know, just irresponsible because I am not inexpensive.  Okay. So, you are going to pay to do this. 

If you have a process in place that actually works.  What you should be looking to do is enhance that as much as you possibly can.  So, if you want to say, Hey, you know what, we're integrating AI products into our pipeline.  I can believe that. And I can go with that.  If you want to say we're leaning in to be a more AI forward thinking company, or we're leaning in to be a more innovative company.

I can go with that, but I don't believe in putting all of your eggs in one basket.  Whether it's for AI or whether it's for machine learning, whether it's for deep data, whether it is for, you know, whatever, you have to look at all of your options and what they actually afford you to be able to do and use that as your, your compass and your, your way forward. 

So, I think, I think we have a little bit of a marketing spin.  That's happening right now because, you know you know my new washer and dryer, they are AI, I don't know what they're doing, but they're a smart, exactly, exactly. 

You know, I've yet to figure out what the AI does on the washer and dryer. I, I, I'm still, I'm still reading up on that, but it does something you know, I don't know if it's sensing how dirty my clothes are or what, but  so, so, yeah, I think, yeah, you, come on, you know how this industry works, you know, something gets hot, everybody uses it, you know, a few years ago, it was blockchain you know, Oh my God, yeah, let's not even go there Which never got realized but maybe, maybe through crypto, who knows?

Hey, well, you know what? I, I have to say that that from a, from a content distribution standpoint and also from a content auditing standpoint blockchain actually has found a home in our industry. Eluvio Michelle Munson and, and Serban. You know, and their team already Luvia, they're doing some great stuff with blockchain and they're pushing, they're pushing the limits of what can be done and they're also challenging CDNs, you know, where, where there's a whole nother way to distribute this content, but.

On top of that, when we start to think about IP, we start to think about individuals being able to be compensated for their work, all of those types of things, blockchain is probably the best foundational platform for us to think about using and, and it, it, it, it has, it has a place, it does have a place.  I would agree.

Um, and that is the promise of blockchain are these contracts that can travel with content. That's right. And re, renumerate the shareholders, the IP shareholders and creators in a way that. It hasn't been tracked before, which is very, you know, I came from Universal Studios home entertainment and, you know, piracy was always a big thing.

Oh, yeah. DRM was a big thing. It's like, you know, how to combat that.  And I don't think they've solved it, but I think that blockchain is the way. Yeah. Much more of a digital DRM type of DNA type of, you know. Mm hmm. Deep in the, in the layers of pixels somehow, and those contracts, you know, it creates, it creates a whole complication around the quantity of those contracts.

Right? Yeah. Yeah.  So. Yeah, I think you can start with films and television but when it comes to kind of single authors of a photograph and how that's tracked through blockchain, I think that's a, it's a way off because of the ubiquity of photographs on the internet. This is crazy. I also have an issue with, Hey, we should be watermarking.

What's what is AI generated? It's like, no, you should be watermarking everything. Oh, yeah, you're hitting on some great points. Forensic watermarking is, you know, there are a number of groups that are out there trying to do some things right now.

That's going to be incredibly important as we move forward because you need to know where some of these images originating. And, and how they're being manipulated, we also need to be able to look and figure out when something actually was you know, based on camera acquisition and it was a live event and it's real footage and it's real imagery, because as we continue to push the limits of what these tools can do in the generative space we are going to really blur the line  for what's real.

And what's generated and then that gets into from a journalism standpoint, that gets into a very dangerous area. From a propaganda standpoint, that can be very, very bad from an entertainment standpoint, it can actually be very, very good because it helps us to create. You know, a story or an image that actually can pull people in and draw them in and make them feel like it's real.

So, it has both value and it also has the capability to be extremely destructive. I look at it like, like, you know, like we would look at nuclear energy. You know, nuclear energy could, could really be wonderful if it can be contained and properly you know, utilize and then it can also be horribly destructive in, in the, in the wrong hands and for the wrong uses. 

I'm hoping for nuclear fission and solar to lead a solar punk future. I think. All right. How we get out of it. I'm, I'm going with you Curt. Okay.  No one talks about that enough. Yeah. Dystopia versus Utopia. Yeah. Yeah. But have you noticed that a lot of the original the original stories that were being told with AI were very dystopian?

Oh, yeah. That was, that was it. It was almost like people; they went right there. They went right there. Right there, you know narrative and like, really, come on people, you know, you could not, you could not look up a, at the beginning of all of this in AI short film without at least having, you know, three out of five of them.

That's the one that, that just came to mind. I, I was looking for a future where I could be in a cyberpunk dispute dystopian future. You know, where everything was destroyed, and it was trying to be rebuilt. That's that, that was, that was sort of like, it was interesting and I, I kind of got to the point where I was looking for happier.

You know, happier stories, right? Or, or, or experimental stories. Yeah. That were pushing the limits of what the, the generative tools could do. You know, almost like, you know, I was looking for art house, you know? Yeah. No, and it's happened, you know, I, I've seen films that just look like. You know, beautiful filmic expressions of nature and, and humanity.

And it's like, they're out there, you know, reacting to that dystopian future. But that said dystopian aside, there is disruption in Hollywood.  In the film streaming community, it has nothing to do with AI. And do you believe that AI can be a savior or a solution to what I think is a mess and, you know, kind of the thinning of Hollywood happening before our eyes. 

That is a really difficult question to answer. I, you know, as you stated, the, you know, AI is not the cause of what we are seeing. You know, COVID plus the, the strikes they caused Hollywood to reassess and essentially go into a mode to have to you know, if you think of it like the stock market, like a, like a correction.

You know, when that correction took place, we had a lot of people who started saying, you know, if we can just survive until 2025, you know, you know, survive till 2025 and everything is going to going to come back.  I personally do not believe that we are going to get back to the volume of content that we saw between probably 20 18, 20 19 and, and right at the beginning of 2020 before the world shut down. 

I don't believe we're going to get back there. And I believe that that was a bloated. Sort of sort of place where we were, it was, we were overextended. So now that the, the market is contracting you know, and the industry is contracting and really kind of pulling things back in, I believe that the disruption that we are seeing is part of the natural process. 

Technology has afforded us to be able to do things in different ways.  We have new players. In, you know, the media industry, you know, a few years ago, Netflix, YouTube, they were thought of as, Oh, those are just, you know, that's a DVD delivery company. And that's a bunch of people making, you know, weird content. 

They're now major players within our industry, you know, Netflix, you know, Netflix was all over the Oscars, you know and so what I think we're going to see is the change in the studios.  The studios are going to produce less and they're going to start distributing more.  I am going to suggest that we're going to see independent studios.

Of all types actually beginning to have their moment in the sun rise up. Yes. You know, and I think that's yeah, that is going to give us the opportunity to hear from various voices who previously were unheard of, and I think that that's going to change the way. That we look at the industry as a whole, there's no more waiting for the big deal.

You know, you almost think of it like what happened with the music industry. You know, it used to be like, you know, you wanted your garage band, and you wanted to get a contract. Once you got the contract, everything was going to be good. You didn't know that once you got the contract, you weren't going to make money.

The studio was going to make money, but then what you needed to do was tour for the rest of your life in order to make money.  You know, what we're going to see now is that all of that's going to get out of the way, and we're going to see independent studios who are essentially the tour,  and they're going to be making money, and they're going to be making good content, and they're going to be pushing the limits of what we can do, and they're going to be challenging our imagination, and that's what's going to actually take over the big studios.

Like I said, they're going to become, you know, supporters. Of this new landscape, and they're going to become distributors because as long as you own the distribution path, you kind of have a stranglehold.  Yeah, and the stranglehold used to be film distribution. The streamers came about that became a new arm for distribution.

The studios raced in and thought streamer when it wasn't true. Yeah. And I think it was a fatal mistake on the studio's part. Well, yeah, yeah, I'll agree. I mean, history has shown versus, yeah, yeah. History has shown that that was not a good idea.  Well, they don't, you know, people don't realize the technology is you do that.

It takes for, you know, something like Netflix. Yes. Distributed globally.  Content locally, globally, and distribute it in a user experience that actually works across multiple nations, right?  That's no easy task. No, it is not millions of dollars. And so, a studio thinking, Oh yeah, no, we just like make a little interface and, you know, use an AWS and serve up some videos, right.

If our movies, yeah, no. I mean, look, even, even AWS realizes how difficult it is, which is why they continue to innovate with prime, you know, they, they know how difficult it is. Netflix knows how difficult it is. And what, what I think is really interesting is that. Netflix knows how difficult it is. And then on the backend, they offer up their technology and what they're doing behind the scenes for free.

They tell you what they're doing. They're, they're not, you know, from an innovation standpoint, they are not four walled. They are developing things. They're pushing the limits of where things go. And then they're sharing it with the industry in hopes to make things better.  And when we, when we talk about where a lot of the, you know, the people who came in late attempting to create a Netflix I think that was, Once again, sort of the desire to control and the desire to be the gatekeeper and the desire to keep a stranglehold. 

And that's not possible in the world today.  It's not. So, you have to rethink your business model. You really have to think about where I am going to take this large studio and how am I going to turn this ship so that it can be profitable now, as we know, most of the studios.  I mean, if you just look at the amount of money that's going in and going out, most of them are profitable, how profitable, that's another question. 

And I think part of why we're seeing Hollywood’s funny money. Yes. Right. Yes. Yes. It can, it is a, it is a wonderful lesson in creative accounting. Yeah. Right. There is no. Back end and actually, I think one of these days I'm going to get in trouble from the studios. They're going to come after me if I keep talking too much. 

My friend the last thing I want to mention is.  I appreciate, you know, the efforts and evangelism and advocacy that you're doing for AI in the Hollywood community. And please keep that up. And I want to give you some time to promote what you're doing and where people can find you and work with you.

And, you know, what are your next speeches where they, where they might be.  You're very kind. I will say that I'll be, I'll be speaking at the Seattle AI Film Festival March 29th and 30th. And I will be speaking at Afro animation in LA April, I think, I think it's April 3rd through the fifth, and then I'll be speaking at NAB in, in Las Vegas April 5th.

Through I think the ninth at, at some point you know, so, so yeah, there's that, but on top of everything else, my company, I2A2 technology studios and labs, we are in the midst of developing two animated what we hope to be series and we will be pitching those, but we're also building some really cool software to help people on the marketing and research side. 

with content engagement and it uses neuroscience and biometrics as well as artificial intelligence and traditional tools for content engagement. We want to take people as deep as they possibly can go right now with the technology that's possible to understand how individuals connect with content, how they engage with things like that. And if they're on the ed tech side, how do professors how do they engage with their students? And how do students actually engage with their curriculum? So, if anybody is ready to come and they have an idea that they want to develop, we help develop.

What you're doing, we help you design it. We help you implement it. We can build as my head of engineering says we can build anything.  So, we are here to help our industry, and we want to do what we can to keep our industry alive.  There you go. That's a great mission. So, thank you, Renard T Jenkins.

And thanks to all of you for tuning in and catch more of our realm. I Q sessions on your favorite podcast platforms, and please follow and smash that subscribe button. You can also follow us on Tik TOK, LinkedIn, and now Bluesky. So, thanks again. We're going to have you back for sure. Cause we want to catch up with all that you're doing.

Thanks so much. Thank you, Curt. It's been a pleasure.