Weta FX CEO Daniel Seah laid out all the reasons why Taiwan is the perfect base for the Oscar-winning VFX company to explore the East Asia market, following its announcement of a partnership with Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA).
In addition to its central location, just a few hours flight from most cities in the region, Taiwan has a supportive government, which is investing in content, and also backs the world’s leading semiconductor industry; Taiwan’s film and TV industries are becoming more internationally prominent, again with government support; and the global studios and streamers that Weta works for are becoming more interested in Asian content.
Of course it also doesn’t hurt that Seah grew up in Taiwan. When the partnership was unveiled at Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) today, TAICCA Chair Sue Wang described it as “one of our sons coming home”.
“Taiwan really benefits from its technology and the success of its semiconductor industry,” Seah explained. “With the government’s endorsement, and the level of talents that we have in Taiwan, both engineers and storytelling creatives, we felt this was the perfect spot for exploring the East Asian market.”
The partnership has three strands – investment into Taiwanese VFX house Moonshine Studio, with the exact shape of that investment currently being worked out; developing AI technology and training talent to use the tech to advance the Taiwanese content industry; and also investing in Taiwanese content and talent in all areas across production, post-production and visual effects, not necessarily just in the AI space.
TAICCA is betting that these three strands, taken together, will strengthen Taiwan’s content industry and enable it to compete on the world stage. One of TAICCA’s major aims has been to help Taiwan’s film and TV industries, which have talent but lacks major studios, to achieve scale.
No numbers have been placed on the size of the Taiwanese government’s commitment to the partnership, but Wang said it represents one of TAICCA’s biggest alliances in the content space. Taiwan’s content industries are currently being supported by a second tranche of $303M (NTD10BN) from the National Development Fund.
On the talent front, Seah said Taiwanese talent is already working at Weta’s studios in Wellington and the aim is to offer internships at its locations around the world. Eventually there will also be investment flowing into individual projects through the partnership.
Moonshine will become Weta’s outpost in Taiwan, joining a network of locations that also includes Melbourne, Vancouver and eventually a rep office in London. The network may potentially be expanded to other East Asian locations such as Singapore, Thailand and South Korea.
Seah explained that he and Thurston had been looking for a partner in the GenAI area for some time, because the attitude of their major clients – the US studios and global streaming platforms – towards AI has changed significantly over the past two years.
“When we started this conversation last year, our clients said absolutely no GenAI,” Seah explained. “But things changed pretty fast since the middle of last year, with several clients basically saying you can use it, but you have to get pre-approval. Then early this year, more clients started asking us what kind of AI strategy do you have, and how much money they can save from using GenAI technology.”
He added that since Q3 this year, the attitude of their clients has changed completely. “Now it’s like, if you don’t have an AI strategy, we don’t want to work with you. That’s why in the last couple of months we’ve been looking for a partner to pick up the pace as soon as possible.”
Weta Chief Technology Officer Kimball Thurston added that the AI models the company is developing in-house, as well as those they use from outside suppliers, are mostly being used to improve workflows and assist live capture filmmaking, rather than replace any of their human employees.
“Humans tell stories, and that’s always core to us. But we do see workflows changing,” Thurston said. “We see different ways of creating and capturing the world. We’ve focused on physical accuracy for decades now, and with some of the new capture technologies, you we can better capture the 3D world we live in, not just the 2D picture. That actually unlocks our artists to do more with creative modification of that world to tell a story.”
Wang addressed concerns rising globally about the fact that most of the leading AI models come from just two nations – the U.S. and China – which has obvious geopolitical consequences for Taiwan, although many nations are also concerned about the creative and economic consequences.
She said the Taiwanese government is developing its own sovereign AI models, which would for example, use Taiwan’s traditional Chinese characters rather than the simplified characters used in mainland China: “This is something we have to do, although we face lots of obstacles, and China’s AI models are quite mature already,” Wang said. “But it’s important for us to preserve the diverse culture of Taiwan and develop our sovereign AI.”
Thurston said Weta is also exploring alternatives to power-guzzling data centers and has launched an open source project to track model training and understand where the images that are being used as training data are coming from.
“We’re trying to be thought leaders in this space and show people a better path to provenance of images. The world is starting to come around and figure out how to track these things and talk about them in a more responsible way,” Thurston said.
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