Last Friday at View Conference in Turin, Europe’s big VFX gathering, somebody in the audience asked Runway’s co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela whether AI could eventually replace human actors.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he said. “I think it’s already happening in a way.”
Variety called it one of the biggest debates of the conference. No kidding.
The session was titled “Every Pixel Will Be Generated,” and he shared the stage with Nvidia’s Richard Kerris. Kerris brought up Brando improvising with a cat on the set of The Godfather, the kind of moment you just can’t prompt. Valenzuela’s answer: not now, but models will probably get to where you can direct them in a very similar way. Kerris said there’s no “make movie button.” Valenzuela: “I wish.”
I laughed. Honestly, me too.
His bigger idea is in his essays. The value of creating pixels is “trending towards zero.” High-end production is “the last expensive layer,” and AI is collapsing what it costs. Someday, he figures, seconds generated catch up with seconds watched. Personalized entertainment as fast as you can eat it.
Then another Nvidia guy, Jeff Kember, said the quiet part out loud. Lots of people use generative AI and talk about it, and lots more use it and don’t, mostly because legal won’t let them. “I don’t know anyone who isn’t.”
Surprise.
So here’s where I land. I’m not clutching pearls at Runway. I love these tools. I’m old, they make me faster than I’ve ever been, and if a model can hand me the shot that’s in my head, that’s what we made it for. If AI out-acts or out-writes somebody someday, fine. If being the best was the only reason you were doing it, you had a problem anyway.
But think about what “pixels go to zero” actually means. When something costs nothing, you get a whole lot of it. And most of that pile is the two-minute thought, pressed out and pushed up for the money. Been there, watched the feeds fill up. Cheap pixels don’t make a lazy story good. They just make it cheaper.
What doesn’t go to zero is the person. The vision, the hours, the stubbornness of making the thing you meant instead of the thing that happened to show up. Even the conference’s own blurb said the instincts of great storytellers matter more, not less, when every pixel can be generated. Yep. And no shit.
That’s the big world. Here’s the little one.
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Also on the beat
- Thélyson Orélien has ended his effort to compile proof he didn’t use AI on his novel; Boréal keeps selling it, with a new printing due next week. Entangled Text / Canadian Press
- Library and Archives Canada’s ISBN rules now have registrants declare a human wrote the book and limit ISBNs for mostly AI-generated work, guidance that has shifted several times since Oct 7. SK Books
- BISG’s Graham Bell lays out how ONIX book metadata can flag AI contributors and “Human Authored” certificates. The Publishing Times
- YouTube is testing Ask YouTube AI answers at the top of regular search results for some U.S. desktop users. Social Media Today
- Kling 4.0 is fully available, with 30-second single-pass video, 10 keyframes, and agent access through MCP, though API pricing isn’t out yet. AI Bacon
How this was made
AI assisted research and a first draft of this Circle View. A human reviewed, edited, and is accountable for the judgment and the final take.
