The problem with AI-enhanced monstrosities isn’t the AI

But 28 days later just received a 4K release this year, which Boyle personally approved. He might have been Lucas in the past, but that wasn’t the case this time. “The good news is it looks like shit.” a review states on the Blu-Ray 4K subreddit. The reviewer was not being facetious, he was simply expressing relief, because 28 days later Lucas was not affected during the scaling process. There is no AI scaling. No sharpening. Just a great horror film, as good looking as it can be given the technical limitations.

Sony has produced the improved version and it’s a masterclass in restraint and craftsmanship. It’s also a rarity in Hollywood, where moving up is usually done by two types of people. One is like Sony or the Star Trek nerds: handling AI tools with as much care as an artist. This type is extremely rare. The other guy has a job to do as quickly and cheaply as possible. Quality and the final product take second place to meeting quotas. He’s the one who seems to be doing most of the scaling work in Hollywood right now. There are thousands of TV shows and movies to scale, which translates, in executive terms, to millions of hours of content to monetize. Most of this scaling is not intended for Blu-Ray boutique marketwhere people could drop $80 for a quality movie transfer. This happens in streaming services that need more offerings to increase subscribers.

My favorite (in a bad way) subset of this form of scaling is what happens to old TV shows. As 28 days laterthere are limits to what scaling can accomplish. Many television shows were only preserved on tape, which degraded over time and was not entirely intact to begin with. This led to a lot of bad scaling, like the ghostly faces that appeared in an episode of Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. In 2024, Paramount received rave reviews for releasing a massive box set for I love Lucy fans that included upscaled content from original 35mm negatives, 16mm reels and tapes. It was quickly ruined by AI creating sharp and strange new people from blurry background actors.

A different world was affected too. And Roseanne.

These are all older shows, syndication darlings that have been reliable TV moneymakers for decades. They could have been remastered like 28 days later or carefully scaled as New deep space. Instead, they were produced. It wasn’t the AI ​​that was the problem, it was the studios and distributors who looked at it before release and said, “Yeah, that looks pretty good.” Like Cameron, they could have been Lucas. Hollywood has this almost obsessive need at the moment to emulate the world of technology businessincluding his absurd passion for AI. It’s a natural response to the invasion of Big Tech. They can’t beat them, so either they are acquired by them or they become them. However, what has always differentiated Hollywood from Silicon Valley is the apparent concern for the profession. Hollywood made money and was the center of media power for decades, but it also created art using every tool at its disposal.

But tools cannot compensate for apathy or mediocrity. This is the heart of the struggle in Hollywood right now. Not Big Tech and their big tech tools, but Hollywood’s need to do things as quickly and cheaply as possible. It’s not just John Goodman, Lucille Ball, or Cree Summer who turn AI into wax paste when you watch their old sitcoms upscaled to streaming. The tools are already used elsewhere – for show title cards at Disney+ And HBO Max and by the scenographers for background art in Emmy-winning franchises. Hell, most the aging of feature films over the last decade used AI in one way or another. The tools are powerful. It’s the people who can be the problem.