OpenAI Ventures Into Cinema With AI-Powered Animation Movie Set To Debut At Cannes: Report

OpenAI is helping produce a feature-length animation movie, largely created with artificial intelligence (AI), according to an exclusive report in The Wall Street Journal late Sunday, an effort to further the technology's appeal in the film industry.

The ChatGPT-maker is offering its tools and computing resources for "Critterz." The project is conceived by Chad Nelson, a creative specialist at OpenAI, and produced in collaboration with London-based Vertigo Films and Native Foreign, a California-based studio that specializes in AI-enchanced content.

"Critterz," written by some members of the team that wrote the adventure comedy "Paddington in Peru," is about forest creatures who go on an adventure after a stranger disrupts their village, according to the WSJ report.

Its creators are attempting to make the movie in about nine months and debut it at the Cannes Film Festival in May next year.

The film has a budget of less than $30 million, far less than what animated films typically cost, and will have humar actors giving character voices. Meanwhile, character sketches would be fed into OpenAI's tools, including GPT-5 and image-generating models.

Even as the film and creative industries are warming up to AI, professionals are wary of a wholehearted embrace of the new technology. Producers fear that certain audiences might find AI-created movies inauthentic, while actors and writers have demanded protection against AI tools, fearing loss of jobs. At the same time, media giants are suing AI makers to protect their copyrights (Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, and Comcast's Universal sued AI image and video company Midjourney for alleged copyright infringement).

"Echo Hunter," a 30-minute sci-fi thriller set to release online late this month, is billed as the first film to be a fully generated AI production.

Over the weekend, media reports noted that OpenAI had informed investors that its spending through 2029 may rise to $115 billion, $80 billion more than previously expected, as it develops its data center server chips and facilities while attempting to rein in cloud server rental expenses.

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