Poll Has Artificial Intelligence reached the point where a continuation is possible?

[ChristopherPike]

I read a lot of social media posts about the STAR TREK: UNITED proposal by Mike Sussman, and backed by Scott Bakula, for a show set decades after the final episode - but...

What if a Paramount+ project re-created STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE using A.I.? Made a newly shot season and employed such technology to alter everything to look like a 2006 production? All the actors were involved, providing their voices and acting, but their physical presence or stand-ins or stunt artists were obviously changed, altered, de-aged to create the illusion 21 years haven't passed...

Would you support it?

 

[Mage]

No.

 

[knightgrace]

It could be done with intelligent human supervision. But, after watching Star Trek: Starfleet Academy for about 30 minutes, finding intelligent humans is something that Hollywood has trouble doing. Yes, Hollywood does do from time to time, but not often enough.

They would absolutely have to avoid tropes.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Watching Roddenberry Archive videos, it really does seem like absolutely anything is possible these days... But A.I. working by itself to some wish list of things we'd like to see, produces rubbish. Mind-blowing multi-million dollar looking rubbish. But still rubbish without real human artistry and performance for it to enhance beyond the real world limitations involved in film-making.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

The thread title asks 'has AI reached a point where it could do a continuation of ENT' ... but the poll seems to be a question of 'should', rather than 'could'.

Could it?

At the moment, no. Not convincingly. Maybe a few years down the road.

'Should it?' is a whole different matter.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

A VERY STRONG NO!!!!!!!!!

People have gone totally gaga about what is being promoted as AI absolutely everywhere....

It's like the latest shiny new toy and sure it has amazing capabilities depending on what is programed into the particular AI application, but it's not even proper AI but more a set of tools that learn via scraping data from everywhere, comparing it to the input used and spitting out something that usually resembles what the person inputting the initial query wanted.

This sort of thing is taking away work from artists and designers, music composers, and others who make their living from bringing people's visions to life. So NO not in favour.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Regardless of the ethics, I'm not in favour of it from a creative point of view. Not everything finishes the way we would like it to finish. Mervyn Peake didn't get a chance to conclude his Gormenghast series due to illness and... well, that's that. It is what it is.

Same with ENT. It ended. Not well, but it ended. It's a closed chapter and any attempt to 'finish' it again 20 years after the fact using AI tools seems pointless. Imagination/head-canon would serve a fan better in this regard and take a lot less effort.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

Provided AI is used to replace every humanoid actor with Porthos then yes.

 

[knightgrace]

The real problem, especially with long stories, is not taking in appropriate short cuts.

For example: the recently concluded Amazon series 'The Wheel of Time ', is a case in point. Three seasons, too much story. At least in the way they did it.

Problem one, they "made" executive decisions based upon their biases. Not just current dreams of how things should be, but in 'their' arrogance , that they knew "better".

They knew better than Robert Jordan. The original AUTHOR!

Excuse me?

He designed each character, for a purpose. By overriding his purpose, they destroyed his line of thought.

It is the 'line of thought', the author's line of thought that is the story behind the story.

Yes, at some point in time, one could have an A. I., do it correctly.

Right now, this day? With cancel culture? It can't be done.


One of the reasons why I look at, Last Unicorn Games Star Trek the Role Playing Game, FASA Star Trek the Role Playing Game, Steve Long's Space Dock; West End Games Star Wars the Role Playing Game, is that the designers took, a good long look at at actual requirements for the various games mentioned in this post. Foundational rules of behavior for Star Ships and technology, as well as for the Force, and the One Power.

The rules matter. And, yes, they are a bias. But a necessary one.

Taking short cuts destroys this.

 

[FederationHistorian]

No.

My position is not based on ethical reasons - my views are AI use in general are actually complicated and do not align with either side of the debate - but because AI animation leaves a lot to be desired. There aren't going to be any half-way decent action scenes at this point in time. Not with the glitches I've seen. No way AI can handle full length episodes.

Down the road though? Maybe.

 

[BillJ]

I don't know. Have to see where the future takes us.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I don't know. Have to see where the future takes us.

I mean, this really.

There’s often a kneejerk reaction against AI slop or whatever, but the figurative Pandora is out of the box now and there’s not much we can do about it.

I’ve been impressed by recent snippets of what it can recreate. Snippets. I think AI is a way off in terms of creating something that’s indistinguishable from a ‘true’ movie/presentation but it’s coming on in leaps and bounds.

20 years down the line at the most I think it’ll be possible to feed it an episode of SNW say, and get it to reskin the sets and actors (plus voices) to look/sound like their TOS counterparts. Or vice versa.

The point of doing so is another matter, but there are those who will want that and (for their own purposes, not commercially) there will be nothing that can stop them.

 

[Gepard]

but because AI animation leaves a lot to be desired.

ve been impressed by recent snippets of what it can recreate. Snippets. I think AI is a way off in terms of creating something that’s indistinguishable from a ‘true’ movie/presentation but it’s coming on in leaps and bounds.

The most promising avenue appears to be keyframe animation and/or mocap with basic grey shaded models, then running that output through geneterive AI to make it photorealistic. The animation, layout, and editing are all still under human control but the AI can do the rest. The VFX industry is starting to experiment with this approach to usable results.

It's still probably not something amateurs will be able to easily do, since it requires professional rigging and animation, but it does drop the entry level quite a bit.

 

[Misuka]

It's no for me because the AI can't produce it with enough quality.

 

[Candleicious Ghost]

It's no for me because the AI can't produce it with enough quality.

I'm saying no because AI will take the jobs of humans like production artists and other related fields, all those people that do 3d modelling for movies and advertising and other content. Even computer artists themselves will be pushed out of their jobs.

 

[Tuskin38]

Fuck no. Hire people, not mindless uncreative "AI"

 

[Detached Nacelle]

No it would still look awful. If it advances to the point it could it could do the job properly then we'll all be making our own continuations. This is of course should be limited to little fan indulgences and not something multimillion corporations should be doing.

 

[E-DUB]

A true AI would be able to "write" a story that would make me laugh, think, and choke up, maybe even on the same page. What we have now is the "AI " version of the Wright Flyer that they want you to believe is a 747.

 

[somebuddyX]

Not by Paramount+. By some rando on the internet? Sure, but depending on what you mean by continuation. You might get a Season 5 that looks like the show but it's gonna be different episodes than what Manny and the crew were dreaming up back in 2005, and that's even if you used the story ideas that they've mentioned over the years, because they always started in once place and out of necessity landed somewhere else. Imagine if all we knew of "Future Tense" was that Sussman wanted to bring the Defiant to the 22nd century and someone made that episode. Except that's not what happened. That's how I feel about these ideas. One day we'll probably see the Borg queen origin story or the first starbase story but it's not really going to be the story they were going to do.
If you wanted a continuation of the show in modern times, well if they're not gonna do it with the actual actors, why even bother?