Hollywood’s hottest AI partner, with Runway’s Cristóbal Valenzuela

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1:23It helps artists communicate things they never could communicate before. Change is hard. You're afraid of it. These are very unpredictable times for the good and the bad. I think the best state of mind is to understand that, yeah, change is the only constant these days.

1:47That's Chris Valenzuela, CEO of Runway, the AI video tools pioneer. If you haven't seen the videos being created via AI today, you're missing some extraordinary stuff. You're also missing out on one of the most contentious areas of AI impact, from Hollywood studios to the marketing world. While Runway has competitors like Google's VO3 and OpenAI's Sora, the company is experiencing breakneck growth. It has high-profile partnerships with the likes of Netflix and Disney, and its tools are being adopted by individual creators as well as everyday people. In our conversation, Chris talks about how AI is redefining both business expectations and our notion of creativity.

2:32He shares why he rebuffed advances from Meta for a huge payday acquisition, and how today's AI video tools are a stepping stone to a totally new media format. Whether you're personally playing around with AI video tools or you're fearful of increasingly sophisticated video deepfakes, Chris is a hands-on guide to the rapidly unfolding future. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

3:06I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Chris Valenzuela, co-founder and CEO of Runway. Chris, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me here. I have to say the past few months, I have become low-key obsessed with AI creative video. Well, maybe not that low-key. I keep seeing these kind of mind-blowing video clips. You know, it feels like there's been this inflection point in the tools and the usage. You released your Gen 4 model not long ago. You had your Gen Alf video editing tool come out. Correct. And there are these other tools out there, too, now. Now, Google's VO3, which I see folks using. Of course, there's OpenAI, Sora, MidJourney.

3:47What's the difference between all these? I mean, are you all utilizing similar engines, you know, or are all these things popping up now because the compute has reached a certain place? It's a combination of things. I mean, we've been working on this for almost seven, eight years. So there's a lot that we've learned after being kind of alone and building this. I would say these days it's becoming more evident to many that the models are getting pretty good at tackling and doing a lot of different things. And so that becomes interest for obvious business reasons. All models are different. I think all models are trained for different reasons.

4:24We tend to focus on professionals and folks who want to make great videos. This amazing model we've released only recently, just a couple of weeks ago, allows you to modify and create video using existing video that was never possible before. And so those kind of breakthroughs are just allowing, I guess, way more people to do much more interesting things. I mean, your tools, I saw you in another video, use voice prompts to create a video scene. Your tools generate camera angles and change objects. The extending a scene outward, filling in what isn't there is amazing. The switching on the lights video that you have, just for those who are listening, right?

5:04This video, we sort of see a cityscape and then street lamps come on and the windows of office and apartment buildings start blinking and the lights are switching on and off in this very choreographed sequence. Can you explain how that was created? It took us like less than an hour to make that video. And you start with a scene, an initial video, and then you ask a runway for things you want to change in that video. and so we could ask if it's daylight we can ask the model to show me a night version of that same scene and so what the model will do is it will understand what's in that scene and it will turn down the light like metaphorically but also like literally like we'll just like turn day into night while maintaining pretty much the consistency for everything else you might turn on the lights of the streets and you can be much more specific you can be only turn the lights on the left or only turn the street lights while keeping everything else dark.

6:02You could be like, now start turning the lights one by one, starting from the one on the left to the one on the right. So in a way, it's kind of an editing reality. Maybe you can think about it like that. You have an existing piece of content and you're working throughout content with AI, asking it to modify it in whatever way you want, which is really fun, to be honest. It's something I think we've never had the chance of doing ever before. And so it's really fun to play with. I've played with runway a little. It's awesome. But I can't sort of write like a single natural language prompt and get a full film yet.

6:37Right. I mean, there is craft and discipline to getting these tools to work at their potential. I mean, are we going to get to the point where like all you need to create a film is the idea for it? You know, the vision and like the production itself is all automatic. deck. I think a key concept of what you mentioned was tools. This is a tool. It's a very powerful tool. And this tool allows you to do things that you couldn't do before. Knowing how to use the tool would always be important. And the tool is not going to do work on their own if you don't know how to will the tool, have you to use it in interesting ways.

7:14And so I guess the answer for the question of like, will we ever get to a point where you can just prompt something and get exactly what you want. I guess the answer is like kind of-ish. Depends on how good you know how to use a tool, right? So think about what tools people are using today to make films, a camera, right? Can a camera help you win an Oscar? Of course. If you have a camera, will you win an Oscar? No. What makes a great filmmaker is like, well, knowing where to point the camera, like knowing how the camera works and functions and how you can tell a story with that camera. And I think that's no difference from how we think about AI tools and runways specifically, which is it can help you go very far.

7:53You can do amazing things with it. You just have to learn how to think with it and work with it. And if you know, then you'll get far. I saw an AI video this morning from director Matt Zine called Forgive the Haters. I don't know if you've seen this or not, but it's this commentary of sort of how traditional media folks and image experts, you know, people who are trained in this are being usurped by this new technology. And it's both kind of scary and encouraging, which kind of feels like the way people's reactions to this tool are. Yeah. Well, I think it's not new, to be honest. I think we have some sort of social amnesia where we sometimes forget things we've lived through in the past.

8:37Like filmmaking was very misunderstood by painters because we ask painters to judge a completely new medium. And so when painters were judging photography or moving pictures, they were scenic through the lenses of oil and pigments and brushes. And they were like, well, photography will never, ever get close to what I can express with a paintbrush. It's just a different medium. You need to understand that it works differently and you need to think about it differently. And I think something similar is happening today where we're asking the painters of our times to judge and analyze this new thing.

9:12And they're going to analyze it through the lens of what they know. I think the invitation we've been trying to encourage people to think about is it's best to think about this as a new medium. It's best to think about this as what the camera was to painting. And you're going to get the most value out of it if you kind of break the assumptions of what expectations you have for this thing based on what you know on the past. That, I think, for me, is the way you move forward and the way that, to be honest, most of the best filmmakers we work with, it takes them a while to realize this. But after you realize and cross that custom to understand that this is an intermediate, you start unlocking amazing things.

9:51You mentioned work that you do with studios in Hollywood. I know you partnered with Netflix and Disney and AMC Networks and whatever. How are they using Runway's AI today? Because AI can be a little bit of a dirty secret in Hollywood, right? People are using it, but they don't always want to admit it. Yeah, I think it's a tool. That's the answer. And so the best studios and the best folks in Hollywood have realized that. and they're using it in their workflows to combine them with other things they know pretty well. The thing is that there are no rules. You can start inventing them right now because it's just pretty, I mean, a laugh is a couple weeks old.

10:29And so people are figuring out things of using and ways of using the technology that we never thought of possible. And that's what I enjoy the most. It's a general purpose technology. It can be used in ways that are diverse and creative and unique. And if you're creative enough, you're going to uncover those things. At some point in the future, there may be a whole different medium about the way you do it. Right now, like, I can imagine they sort of, what they take ideas and they create essentially a prototype of a film to show to sort of get ideas through. Is that part of how it's used? You can think about, like, broadly speaking, two stages.

11:08There's pre-production and post-production. Pre-production is like, well, writing the script and doing art direction and like selecting characters and casting and location scouting and just preparing to like make the stuff. Right. And so there's there's many use cases of runway in there. Like, of course, the obvious ones are storyboarding and helping you with writing the script and helping you with like casting characters and seeing how they're going to like behave and what they're going to do. and then in post once you've film or recorded something there's a lot of visual effects and things that you need to apply and change to the videos themselves and so let's say the example that we're speaking before turning like day into night let's say you've recorded something and it happens to be that like someone changed the script later and the shot that you recorded had to happen at night well the way you would do it before was that you had to go back and shoot again and like spend more time and fly the actors again and do the whole thing.

12:02Or now you can go into runway and just ask the model to turn that scene into night and it will do it for you. So it's less of them coming to runway and typing, get me a multi-award winning film now, fast and cheap. And more about, well, I have this problem. It's very expensive to solve. I have a tool now that can help me do it faster and better. Can I use it? Will it make my movie? No. but it will help you very much in getting there faster and cheaper. There was some hubbub at the Oscars about AI used in The Brutalist. Are we past that sort of taboo now? Is that not going to happen anymore? Yes, we are.

12:43I mean, look, it's new. It's misunderstood. I always argue that, you know, AI is like a mirror these days because it's such a generalizable technology. It can be applicable to many different things, which make it so that we can project into it anything we want. So in a way, the way we look at this technology is a reflection or a mirror of how we look at the world. And so the people who are very excited about the world, new generations of creatives who are like, they want to unshackle from like whatever they've done before and how the world works and have all the creative liberties. It's the most freedom they've ever had.

13:16They can just make stuff without asking for permission. For the people who have been in the industry for many, many, many, many years and want to not change anything of it, It's like revolution, right? Or you want to prevent revolution from happening. Or maybe you want to encourage it, depending on what's your mindset, right? If you're scared, AI might become like a perfect way of like mirroring that like scaryness of the world. And so it becomes some sort of a reflection of sorts. And, but I think part of moving away from that is having people really experience and using AI in their day-to-day lives.

13:52If you've never used video models or AI image models, if you've never seen how it works, there's only one answer to forming an opinion on something you've never used, which is use it. And look, again, this is very new. Some models are a couple of weeks old. And so it's hard for people to fully get on board on things that are moving so fast. But I think over time, people have gotten better. I mean, Hollywood has gotten really good at understanding both the limitations and the challenges. And that happens just because you're more exposed to it. Outside of Hollywood, you run away work with a lot of big corporations, Fortune 100 companies for their marketing efforts.

14:32Is there less pushback compared to the film world because traditions of, you know, quote, art are a little less precious? I think every industry has a different set of like concerns and like challenges that you have to manage and work with. like game studios have different sort of like things you need to make sure you can solve for and we sell a lot to architects for example and architects have also different sort of like standards and workflows and things they want to see into the products. I think they all work slightly different but the interesting thing is that you can help them all if the models are good enough and they can journalize you can solve them all And the same tool could work across?

15:15If you think about the challenge of an architect to render a video for a client showing them a building, what they're trying to achieve is not that hard and similar from what a filmmaker is trying to achieve when they're rendering a building for like a Superman movie, right? They're using different tools, but that's because historically those things have been separated. But now if my model can help you and learn how to do both, then you can help with the same product, with the same experience, the same underlying model, solve for those two use cases, Which is wild because then there's no verticalization of software they have to do.

15:51They don't have to do specific UIs and just train better models. And if you train better models, a lot of things will happen. A lot of things will happen and a lot of things are already happening. I'm thinking back to the statement Chris made, there are no rules. It's both exciting and daunting. And given that, what kind of responsibility does Runway feel it has for making sure its AI video tools aren't used for deceptive purposes? And how far out does Chris plan Runway's business in an environment that's so dynamic? We'll talk about that, plus why he walked away from a potential acquisition by Meta, after the break.

16:31Stay with us.

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18:13So if you're scaling, make it simple with Deal. Go to deel.com slash MOS and get up to three months free. Before the break, Runway's Chris Valenzuela shared how the company's AI video tools are disrupting Hollywood and the very idea of creativity. Now he talks about the risks and responsibilities of AI toolmakers, why Runway resets its roadmap weekly, and how today's video AI tools are just a stepping stone to something much, much bigger. Let's dive back in. I have to say, like, personally, I get torn because, as you can tell, like, I love the creative output in AI video and the possibilities.

18:59And at the same time, there are possibilities that scare me a little bit about uses, about job impacts, about unintended consequences. Like, how concerned are you about people using your tools for deepfakes and scams? I mean, I saw one news report about legal experts worried that videos in the courtroom will be harder to trust this evidence. Like, do you feel like this stuff is your responsibility to protect against or like, you know, you're just a toolmaker and that's it's not really your role to get into those use cases? I think it's a social responsibility to bring everyone up to speed and help people navigate through what are the good and the positive and the great outcomes and what are the things that we should be presenting for.

19:47And this happens with every technology. Think about cars. I mean, cars are amazing. It's got us to do a lot culturally and socially. There's also great dangers in cars. And so we put norms and safety and seatbelts. and we require you to get a driver's license. There's all these things we've collectively built together to understand that this powerful technology can get us very far with the right safeguards. And it's not the responsibility of a company or one person as much as society as a whole to first recognize the importance of the technology itself and then understand where it can be either improved or prevented for any misuses.

20:28At the same time as you're sort of managing this technology shift, you're also managing a business shift. I mean, your business is growing very fast. I know that Meta reportedly approached Runway about an acquisition earlier this year before spending$14 billion on scale AI. And aside from the money, what sorts of calculations go through your mind in considering whether to stay independent? I think I'm having too much fun, to be honest. I care too much about this. I think it would be a mess if we sell the company now, mostly because we know exactly or we have a good sense of, I think, extrapolating where things are going to go in terms of performance of models and qualities and use cases that I want to be the one building it.

21:21And I mean, that's what we've got in here. And there's such a big opportunity to like make the world much more creative, help artists, like tell stories that we haven't told before. And I want to be the one leading that with my own kind of like vision and like being owner of my own destiny in a way, you know? So yeah, it's just, it's too fun. With the AI tools evolving so fast, It can be hard to anticipate where the puck is moving to, you know? And I'm curious, like, how much are you like, yeah, I know what I'm building toward. It's this, you know, vision versus how much has to be kind of reactive and adaptive that you can't know.

22:03You build some sort of intuition over time, I would say. Again, I think this happens with, like, think about the best athletes. It's like when I think Djokovic was speaking about this in an interview very recently where like he was, he knows when and how to hit a ball without having to think about it because his body has been trained for years for that. And every time he thinks about it, he fails because he gets too much into his head and like starts overthinking it. But he doesn't think about it. He just knows because like his body has been trained for that. I think as an organization, we've been trained for years to like understand kind of what works, where it doesn't work, where things are heading, what's worth paying attention to, what's worth focusing research on.

22:41And that intuition is very valuable. Specifically when the world moves so fast, there's so much information you have to digest that if you don't have a good sense of what signal versus what noise, you're just going to have a hard time parsing and understanding what's worth paying attention to. I think that for us is incredibly important. It's more of an art than a science, to be honest. And it has to do with just being good at learning and having that experience. And how far out do you think of your product roadmap? Or is that something you're reassessing all the time? Yeah, I mean, it's a weekly thing, to be honest.

23:17It happens. If you're planning on a quarterly basis, you're not going to make it. I strongly believe that for many years. And I think that's evident now for public companies. If you're planning on an eight-month-long process, you're done. Like it's in four weeks, you're like going to get leapfrogged and like things will change. We have long-term visions and we have long-term ambitions of where things want. We need to take them. We've historically taken this like open-ended research approach, which is you can think about it as you define, instead of defining very specific goals you want to accomplish, you define the boundaries on which you want the team to like play and experiment.

23:55And then setting the boundaries and the limits is kind of the hard thing because if it's too open, then there's nothing really directionally happening. If it's too broad, then it's just an objective that's very clear. If it's broad enough and has enough of the right incentives, then people are going to stumble on things that are new, that you've never thought of before, that have a great value. And those are the things that we care the most. That open-ended research approach that's less focused by goals, but much more by stepping stones of discovery and learning. It's like a change definition of the way a lot of startups begin, right?

24:31Usually there's sort of, there's a customer need or a pain point or a use case that you're trying to solve for. And what you're talking about is sort of, it's a very different way of approaching it, right? Because you don't even know what you're going to be solving for. Yeah, it's very different. Again, you have to recognize the speed of technology and how fast things are changing. So if you don't recognize that, I think you're not being honest with how your plan will change over time. And I think you're right. Product has historically been very structured and a goal and you're going to have a customer and you know how things are going to go.

25:08And overall, you don't expect things to change that much. I think what's becoming reality these days is research and product should become part of the same. Like if you're just a research company, you're going to miss out on product and there's no feedback loop from customers. You're not learning from the real use cases. If you're just a product company, you're going to get lipped for it by research. And again, part of it is you have to be there building those two things together. You have to be willing to try things quickly. I mean, you can build prototypes in like a few minutes that used to take you months to build.

25:40And because you can do that, you should do that. Like you have to do that. Of course, someone else will. I mean, if you're not, someone else will. Like that's how businesses in AI go from zero to like a billion in like a couple of years, even months. Like that has never happened before. There's no scale of adoption of technology like that we've ever seen before. And again, that's because models are getting better. Performance is getting better. Models are improving themselves. It just has all these compounding effects. Distribution is also like pretty much built. So shipping products to people is pretty straightforward.