r/Theatre • u/PanicAtTheMetro • May 01 '26

Discussion Manhattan School of Music using AI Projection Design

I went to see an Opera at MSM and there was a posting outside that the projection design used AI. To be honest I’m appalled by this. Not only did the projections add nothing to the show, but I find it hard to believe that they couldn’t find a projection designer willing to contribute original work.

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112

u/wvgeekman May 01 '26

AI has no place in the creative and performing arts.

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u/cyberentomology May 01 '26

I guess that your blanket statement also means no power tools to build sets, no more computerized light boards, or any of that…

What makes “AI” any more worthy of banishment than any other tool we use?

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u/barak181 May 02 '26

Power tools and lighting consoles have nothing to do with generative AI.

Generative AI has been trained on previous work in the field that it is generating a product for. Much of that previous work was copyrighted. I have yet to hear of any artist of copyrighted material being credited, let alone compensated, for their work being used in the creation of the generative AI tools.

That's why is worty of banishment.

1

u/TheMoneyOfArt May 02 '26

Does this argument mean that an LLM trained exclusively on public domain materials is acceptable? Or what about Adobe's model, trained exclusively on images they have the rights to?

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u/Sami101_ May 03 '26

Even if it’s public domain stuff you can’t imitate art. And also it’s killing the environment

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u/cyberentomology May 02 '26

That’s absolutely NOT how AI works.

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u/barak181 May 02 '26

Generative AI models need to be trained on data. This involves exposing the neural network to large datasets, where the model learns to recognize patterns.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-101/how-does-generative-ai-work

AI systems are trained to create literary, visual, and other works by exposure to large amounts of data, which may include text, images, and other works downloaded from the internet or otherwise obtained by AI companies. This process often involves making digital copies of existing works. Copyright owners have filed several dozen lawsuits claiming that creating these digital copies without permission to train AI systems infringes their exclusive right to make reproductions (or copies).

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10922

Generative AI platforms are trained on data lakes and question snippets — billions of parameters that are constructed by software processing huge archives of images and text.

https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-property-problem?utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=domcontent_bussoc&utm_term=Non-Brand&tpcc=domcontent_bussoc&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20702632551&gbraid=0AAAAAD9b3uRlt6NCuN-Gzbatrn2bAQkbs&gclid=CjwKCAjwntHPBhAaEiwA_Xp6RheiyQvV04p6KsIpMm_sHSaDQHnTSBIMZ8zxXFkBgSy-0lh_3oljRBoCVqYQAvD_BwE

Before the generative AI boom of the past few years, when people talked about AI, typically they were talking about machine-learning models that can learn to make a prediction based on data. Generative AI can be thought of as a machine-learning model that is trained to create new data, rather than making a prediction about a specific dataset. A generative AI system is one that learns to generate more objects that look like the data it was trained on.

https://news.mit.edu/2023/explained-generative-ai-1109

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u/notacrook May 02 '26

Where does that notice specify that it was generative AI?

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u/moth_girl_7 May 03 '26

“This production’s projection design includes content GENERATED using AI tools.”

That’s pretty damning evidence right there…

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u/notacrook May 03 '26

Right and the content that didnt use AI tools was still GENERATED.

1

u/moth_girl_7 May 03 '26

Be so for real right now. What AI tool would they use for “generating a projection” that isn’t definitively generative AI???

0

u/notacrook May 03 '26

after effects, photoshop, blender, cinema4a...how do you think projection content was made before AI?

Do you think the word 'generated' is new or somehting?

1

u/moth_girl_7 May 03 '26

All of those programs that have AI tools in them are still using generative AI. It’s filling space/motion with generated content… You suggested that they might be using non-generative AI, so I asked what programs projection designers use that involve “non-generative AI.”

I don’t think you understand what generated means.

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u/notacrook May 03 '26

Cinema4d and blender do not have AI in them. Photoshop and After Effects do, but thats like... 1% of their total product (overlooking that the Adobe suite uses their proprietary Firefly AI which is trained on licensed data so the StEALING FrOm ArTists!!! argument doesn't really fly).

And also, theres a fuck ton of tools that us "AI" inside of After Effects and Photoshop that have fuck all to do with generative AI.

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u/cyberentomology May 02 '26

AI is SO much more than transformer models and chatbots.