In a positive step forward and a possible sign of things to come, artificial intelligence video generation startup Runway AI Inc. has signed a deal with entertainment company Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. to explore the use of AI in film production.

The first-of-its-kind partnership is centered around the creation and training of a new AI model that will be customized on Lionsgate’s proprietary catalog. Lionsgate is behind franchises such as “The Hunger Games,” “Twilight,” “John Wick,” “Saw,” “Divergent,” and “Knives Out,” along with being behind hit movies such as “La La Land” and “American Psycho.”

The resultant AI model will be designed to help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors and other creative talent augment their work, including support for the creation of generative cinematic video.

“Several of our filmmakers are already excited about its potential applications to their pre-production and post-production process,” Lionsgate Vice Chair Michael Burns said in a post. “We view AI as a great tool for augmenting, enhancing and supplementing our current operations.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that Burns expects that the company will be able to save millions of dollars from using the new model. Lionsgate initially plans to use the new AI model for internal purposes such as storyboarding — laying out a series of graphics to show how a story unfolds — and eventually for creating backgrounds and special effects, such as explosions, for the big screen.

Burns also told the Journal that the studio signed the deal believing it could fall behind competitors if it didn’t move quickly. Those competitors, including The Walt Disney Co. and Paramount Pictures Corp., are said to have had discussions about partnering with AI companies that are offering generative AI video creation.

The announcement comes as entertainment companies and others remained concerned about the copyright aspects of generative AI video as well as its implications for the overall industry; while still in its early days, generative AI video continues to develop rapidly and it’s feasible in the coming years that the technology could advance far enough to compete with Hollywood studios.

The deal, including the training of a new AI model being created based on Lionsgate’s existing catalog, also sets a precedent when it comes to training models and licensing. AI companies, not just those in video, are being faced with accusations of copyright theft and notably among them is Runway.

Runway was accused in July of using publicly available YouTube videos to train its AI video generation model, including videos from The New Yorker, VICE News, Pixar, Disney, Netflix Inc. and Sony Entertainment Inc.

Legal action has also been taken concerning AI training regarding text being used to train models, with Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI sued for their use of nonfiction authors’ work in AI training in November. The class-action lawsuit, led by a New York Times reporter, claimed that OpenAI allegedly scraped the content of hundreds of thousands of nonfiction books to train their AI models and in doing so, breached the copyright of the authors.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram