Hollywood's major studios have swung from banning generative AI outright to avoiding visual effects vendors that have no strategy for it, according to Daniel Seah, CEO of Weta FX, the company behind 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Avatar.' Seah spoke to press in Taipei on Friday after Weta FX signed a partnership with the Taiwan Creative Content Agency, or TAICCA, at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest. Weta's clients, he said, are mainly the Big Four studios and streaming platforms.

The reversal was swift. Early last year, Seah said, studio legal departments sent word that 'there is no such scenario that you can use any of GenAI for any of our work.' By midyear, several clients were allowing the technology provided Weta obtained pre-approval and used only a handful of companies. Around the turn of the year, clients began asking about Weta's AI strategy, mostly to gauge savings. Since the third quarter of this year, he said, the message has been, 'If you don't have an AI strategy, don't bother to work with us.'

That shift pushed Weta to find a partner that could help it move faster on GenAI. It chose Moonshine Studio, a Taiwanese animation and VFX outfit it has worked with for about six months. Seah said AI has become a national strategy in Taiwan on the back of the island's semiconductor industry, and Moonshine, free of the client restrictions Weta faces, had been moving quickly.

Seah said Weta has no intention of using AI to replace artists or employees: 'It's more like to enhance and increase more workflow for us.' Chief technology officer Kimball Thurston said Weta has been building its own models for modifying and recreating the world, 'not necessarily the like ChatGPT-type of model.' Work with Moonshine, he said, will likely center on the artist layer, what the AI world calls the harness, 'which I think is the worst name they could have chosen.' The aim is a tool that lets filmmakers refine stories across 'whole timelines of long-form content rather than just 20-second TikTok videos.'

Thurston said Weta also uses outside video models such as Kling AI and ByteDance's Seedance where clients permit it. 'You kind of have to,' he said, noting that those models 'killed a bunch of competition, fundamentally.' Security rules mean such models must be hosted outside China, which he said is achievable because ByteDance now operates globally.

Under the partnership, TAICCA and Taiwan's Ministry of Culture will identify young talent and introduce them to Weta FX, which may offer internships in Wellington, Melbourne and Vancouver. Seah said Weta recently announced it is likely to open a representative office in London as well.

Weta has no footprint in Taiwan, but Seah called the island an ideal base for exploring Asia, citing flights of three to four hours to Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea, government backing and a pool of engineers and storytellers. 'It's more, to me, about market enablement than it is about any particular location,' Thurston said, adding that Weta has also held talks in Thailand and Korea. TAICCA chair Sue Wang called the deal the biggest Taiwan has struck in the content industry so far, and 'a key opportunity to move from technology hardware to technology applications,' meaning software.

Thurston said Weta started an open-source project about 18 months ago called the Rongotai Model Train Club, named after a Wellington area. It records refinement and LoRA training in image metadata, and anyone defining a model must state which datasets were used, an effort he said aligns with work at the Visual Effects Society's Technology Committee and at MovieLabs.

VFX supervisor Sheldon Stopsack said the new tools must fit the studio's existing pipeline, including its motion capture work, preserving creative control. 'People still want to see the big star performing,' Thurston added, whether as an ape, a Na'vi or 'some other crazy creature.'