A24 Knows You’re Mad About the Google AI Collab
A24 Knows You’re Mad About the Google AI Collab
A24 知道你对他们与谷歌的 AI 合作感到愤怒
Backrooms, the recent horror movie mega-hit, is a film replete with ideas about repetition and degradation. Its central theme—the horror of a world that seems to be mindlessly, monstrously, ripping off our own—was regarded in some circles as a critique of generative AI. The idea has clearly struck a nerve. Recently passing $300 million at the global box office, Backrooms has become the biggest hit yet for its buzzy boutique producer and distributor, the New York company A24.
近期大热的恐怖电影《后室》（Backrooms）是一部充斥着关于重复与退化理念的作品。其核心主题——一个似乎在盲目且恐怖地剽窃我们现实世界的恐怖世界——在某些圈子里被视为对生成式 AI 的批判。这个观点显然触动了人们的神经。《后室》全球票房近期突破 3 亿美元，成为其备受瞩目的精品制片与发行商——纽约公司 A24 迄今为止最成功的作品。
On the back of this box office coup, it’s a bit funny that A24 would recently announce a $75 million research partnership with DeepMind, Google’s in-house artificial intelligence lab. As The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, the tech giant is teaming up with A24 to create new filmmaking “tools,” as part of A24’s technology startup, A24 Labs, overseen by cofounder Scott Belsky.
在这一票房捷报的背景下，A24 最近宣布与谷歌内部人工智能实验室 DeepMind 达成 7500 万美元的研究合作，显得有些讽刺。据《华尔街日报》周一报道，这家科技巨头正与 A24 联手开发新的电影制作“工具”，这是 A24 旗下由联合创始人 Scott Belsky 监管的科技初创公司 A24 Labs 的一部分。
“This is a research partnership,” Sophia Shin, who handles communications at A24, tells WIRED in an email. “We’re working side-by-side with DeepMind’s researchers to learn, iterate, and build, having an active hand in shaping new tools and workflows.”
“这是一项研究合作，”A24 的公关负责人 Sophia Shin 在给《连线》（WIRED）的邮件中表示，“我们正与 DeepMind 的研究人员并肩工作，进行学习、迭代和构建，积极参与塑造新的工具和工作流程。”
It’s the latest in a line of uneasy, controversial marriages between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Late last year, Disney announced it was taking a $1 billion stake in OpenAI, including licensing characters like Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and C-3PO to the company’s video generation model, Sora. A few months later, Sora itself was kaput, as was the deal. AI’s threat to cinema, and the creative arts more generally, can feel completely existential: automating (and killing) entry-level jobs, threatening writers’ rooms, and squatting in multiplexes to showcase AI-generated work that runs the gamut from boring to abominable. Some studios have sued AI companies for copyright infringement.
这是硅谷与好莱坞之间一系列令人不安且充满争议的联姻中的最新一例。去年年底，迪士尼宣布向 OpenAI 投资 10 亿美元，其中包括将米老鼠、高飞和 C-3PO 等角色授权给该公司的视频生成模型 Sora。几个月后，Sora 本身陷入停滞，该交易也随之告吹。AI 对电影乃至整个创意产业的威胁让人感到一种彻底的生存危机：它正在自动化（并扼杀）入门级工作，威胁编剧室，并占据影院空间来展示那些从无聊到令人作呕的 AI 生成作品。一些制片厂已经起诉 AI 公司侵犯版权。
There are also growing concerns that AI’s capture of the film business has a chilling effect, as in the recent case of studios distancing themselves from Luca Guadagnino’s biopic of OpenAI founder Sam Altman, Artificial.
人们也越来越担心 AI 对电影行业的渗透会产生寒蝉效应，正如最近制片厂纷纷与卢卡·瓜达尼诺（Luca Guadagnino）执导的 OpenAI 创始人萨姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）传记片《Artificial》撇清关系一样。
The announcement of the A24 AI partnership was especially puzzling, and contentious, precisely because of A24’s place in contemporary film culture.
A24 宣布与 AI 合作的消息之所以特别令人困惑且充满争议，恰恰是因为 A24 在当代电影文化中所处的地位。
A24’s legion of diehards do not seem to be taking the news of its latest collab especially well. Earlier this week, A24 released the trailer for Jesse Eisenberg’s new musical drama The Debut. On X, comments under the trailer were littered with criticism lobbed at A24, from fans posting tombstones and declaring the death of the company, to promises of illegally pirating the movie (to eat into A24’s profits), to snarky remarks like: “Pretty ironic that The Debut is the film that comes out in the mids [sic] of a24 ending itself with ai.” (Your definition of “irony” may vary.)
A24 的大批死忠粉似乎对这一最新合作的消息反应并不好。本周早些时候，A24 发布了杰西·艾森伯格（Jesse Eisenberg）的新音乐剧《The Debut》的预告片。在 X（原推特）上，预告片下方的评论充斥着对 A24 的批评，粉丝们有的发布墓碑图片宣告公司“死亡”，有的扬言要非法盗版这部电影（以削减 A24 的利润），还有人讽刺道：“《The Debut》这部电影在 A24 用 AI 自毁的过程中上映，真是够讽刺的。”（你对“讽刺”的定义可能有所不同。）
“Our relationship with our audience is something we don’t take for granted,” A24’s Shin stresses. “This partnership exists because we want to dictate what tools get built for artists, and so they have a voice in shaping them rather than having tools handed to them. We’d rather have a seat at the table than on the sidelines.”
“我们从不认为与观众的关系是理所当然的，”A24 的 Shin 强调，“这次合作的存在是因为我们希望决定为艺术家开发什么样的工具，让他们在塑造这些工具时拥有发言权，而不是被动地接受工具。我们宁愿坐在谈判桌前，也不愿袖手旁观。”
Google DeepMind did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
谷歌 DeepMind 未立即回应置评请求。
Cool Factor / 酷因子
A24 is a huge tastemaker in the film space. “In the same way Disney sells nostalgia, A24 has sold the feeling of being very hip, and cutting-edge, for as long as they’ve been around,” says film critic Esther Rosenfield.
A24 是电影界巨大的潮流引领者。影评人 Esther Rosenfield 表示：“就像迪士尼贩卖怀旧一样，A24 自成立以来一直在贩卖一种非常时髦、前卫的感觉。”
Before Backrooms, A24 spearheaded canonical American indie films like The Witch, Moonlight, Midsommar, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and the recent Marty Supreme. The studio has launched, and supported, the work and careers of serious filmmakers like Sofia Coppola, Denis Villeneuve, Ari Aster, Jane Schoenbrun, Celine Song, and the brothers Safdie. It has netted dozens of Academy Award nominations since its 2012 founding. The distinctive A24 logo before a film trailer is, in a moviegoing culture otherwise dominated by tedious franchise IP blockbusters, often enough to build hype for a new release.
在《后室》之前，A24 领衔制作了诸如《女巫》、《月光男孩》、《仲夏夜惊魂》、《瞬息全宇宙》以及最近的《Marty Supreme》等美国独立电影经典。该工作室发掘并支持了索菲亚·科波拉、丹尼斯·维伦纽瓦、阿里·艾斯特、简·舍恩布伦、席琳·宋以及萨弗迪兄弟等严肃电影人的作品和职业生涯。自 2012 年成立以来，它已获得数十项奥斯卡提名。在被乏味的系列 IP 大片所主导的观影文化中，电影预告片前那个独特的 A24 标志，往往足以让一部新片未映先火。
It is also the rare American entertainment company to have its own loyal groupies, who flex their own cinephilic bona fides with A24 caps, tote bags, and collectable, limited-edition tie-dye T-shirts. You don’t really hear about “Paramount fans” or “Touchstone Pictures–heads.” But A24 has, as they say, shooters.
它也是极少数拥有忠实拥趸的美国娱乐公司，粉丝们通过佩戴 A24 的帽子、帆布袋以及收藏限量版扎染 T 恤来展示他们的影迷身份。你很少听说“派拉蒙粉丝”或“试金石影业死忠”，但 A24 确实拥有所谓的“拥护者”。
“They have a very powerful and successful marketing department,” says Andrew DeWaard, a media studies professor at UC San Diego and author of the 2024 book Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture. “They’ve branded their company as edgy, forward-thinking, and appealing to young people. They’ve created a fandom for their company.”
“他们拥有一个非常强大且成功的营销部门，”加州大学圣地亚哥分校媒体研究教授、2024 年出版的《衍生媒体：华尔街如何吞噬文化》（Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture）一书的作者 Andrew DeWaard 说道，“他们将公司打造得前卫、具有前瞻性，并吸引年轻人。他们为自己的公司创造了一个粉丝群体。”
But for a scholar like DeWaard, the DeepMind deal is not some major, sacrilegious break in A24’s business practices. In Derivative Media, he notes that A24’s cofounder, Daniel Katz, previously led film financing at Guggenheim Partners, a global firm heavily invested in environmentally ruinous resource extraction. In 2024, the company received a significant cash injection from Thrive Capital, which has also invested heavily in OpenAI. A24 Labs head Scott Belsky, who’s at the center of the DeepMind deal, was among the recently leaked names linked to Silicon Valley financier Peter Thiel’s invite-only club, Dialog.
但对于像 DeWaard 这样的学者来说，与 DeepMind 的交易并非 A24 商业实践中某种重大的、亵渎性的背离。他在《衍生媒体》中指出，A24 的联合创始人 Daniel Katz 此前曾在古根海姆合伙公司（Guggenheim Partners）负责电影融资，这是一家在全球范围内大量投资于破坏环境的资源开采业务的公司。2024 年，该公司获得了 Thrive Capital 的大量注资，而 Thrive Capital 也对 OpenAI 进行了巨额投资。处于 DeepMind 交易核心的 A24 Labs 负责人 Scott Belsky，最近也被曝出与硅谷金融家彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）的受邀制俱乐部“Dialog”有关联。
Taste Test / 品味测试
The company’s seat-at-the-table rationale has a familiar ring. The AI takeover of cinema is routinely pitched—by stakeholders in AI firms, incidentally—as fated. It’s not a matter of if, but when. To rail against it, the argument goes, would be as futile as a man on Wednesday railing against Thursday. “They want to make AI feel inevitable,” DeWaard says of AI firms like Google. “They want to make AI feel like it’s everywhere. They want it to feel normal. Culture is part of that.”
该公司关于“坐在谈判桌前”的理由听起来很耳熟。AI 对电影业的接管通常被 AI 公司的利益相关者描述为命中注定。这不再是“是否”的问题，而是“何时”的问题。按照这种逻辑，反对它就像一个人在周三抱怨周四到来一样徒劳。“他们想让 AI 显得不可避免，”DeWaard 在谈到谷歌等 AI 公司时说，“他们想让 AI 感觉无处不在。他们想让它感觉正常。文化就是其中的一部分。”
Rosenfield regards the deal as a form of positive PR, at least on the part of Google. “They’re saying, ‘We want to launder our reputation through you,’” she says. “We want to make it look like serious artists are going to be making…”
Rosenfield 将这笔交易视为一种积极的公关手段，至少对谷歌而言是这样。“他们是在说，‘我们想通过你们来洗白我们的声誉，’”她说，“我们想让人们觉得严肃的艺术家们将会制作……”