The machines are rising; you just haven’t realized it because they’re so gosh-darn cute! That’s the idea: it’s to distract us from their true intentions. We should all be very afraid. When computers aren’t beating us at chess or playing Jeopardy or driving cars (seriously, is this really a good idea?), they’re writing sci-fi movies. The latest AI endeavor is creating a trailer for the upcoming thriller Morgan. 20th Century Fox and IBM have teamed up to create the world’s first ‘cognitive movie trailer.’ The IBM boffins trained Watson on the history, structure and rhythms of 100 horror movie trailers, with the AI system breaking down its research into an analysis of the visual and audio components of each.
Once the AI had a good understanding of horror trailers, developers fed it Morgan in its entirety. This seemed apt because Morgan is a thriller about an artificially-enhanced human. “After the system ‘watched’ the movie, it identified 10 moments that would be the best candidates for a trailer. In this case, these happened to reflect tender or suspenseful moments,” reports IGM’s John F. Smith. Here is the trailer. I have seen Morgan, by the way, and I don’t think it’s very good. But what do I know? I’m only human.
