Overview
AI has become a core tool in creative content production. Two cases sharply illustrate both sides of this shift. The first is SPACE GREEN, a pilot video by Korean VFX company Giantstep that blends AI with traditional VFX. The second is As Deep as the Grave, a film that resurrects actor Val Kilmer — who passed away in April 2025 — using generative AI. The first raises a business question: “How do you sell AI content?” The second raises an ethical one: “Is a posthumous AI performance a tribute or exploitation?”
Giantstep’s SPACE GREEN — The Hybrid Approach
Who Is Giantstep
Giantstep is a Korean VFX company founded in 2008. They’ve collaborated with SM Entertainment’s virtual artist NAEVIS, Samsung, Netflix, Disney, and others. The key distinction: this isn’t a pure AI startup. Giantstep is a company that layered AI on top of years of accumulated VFX expertise.
The SPACE GREEN Project
SPACE GREEN is an R&D pilot video. Its defining feature is a hybrid approach — not AI alone.
- Team: 4 junior artists (1–3 years experience) + 1 director
- Timeline: Just 10 days
- Method: AI generates rough drafts → VFX team refines details → final DI (Digital Intermediate) polish
In one sentence, this pipeline works like this: AI takes it from 1 to 9, and the artists cover the last mile.
The Detail Valley
AI-generated footage looks convincing at first glance but falls apart under scrutiny — fine textures dissolve, motion feels uncanny, edges lose coherence. This zone is called the Detail Valley. What Giantstep is actually selling isn’t AI footage itself; it’s the ability to bridge that quality gap by combining AI with VFX expertise.
For context: One More Pumpkin, which won the Dubai International AI Film Festival grand prize, had a $0 budget and a 5-day production window. AI alone can win awards. That reframes the question:
Is AI content’s competitive edge in making it better — or in selling it better?
Giantstep’s answer is clear: both matter, but market differentiation comes from quality. Anyone can make a $0 AI video. Clients pay for what lies beyond that.
Val Kilmer’s Final Film — When Technology Becomes Art
Background
Val Kilmer was best known as Iceman in Top Gun. He lost his voice to throat cancer in 2015, and passed away in April 2025 at age 65.
Director Koerte Bruyns cast Kilmer for As Deep as the Grave in 2020, but Kilmer’s deteriorating health made filming impossible. Bruyns used generative AI trained on photos and footage spanning Kilmer’s career — from his early years to his final days — to bring him back to the screen.
The Key Decision: Keeping the Damaged Voice
In Top Gun: Maverick (2022), an AI-restored voice was used. This film made the opposite choice — Kilmer’s real, damaged voice was kept as-is.
The character in the film is also ill. The character’s suffering and the actor’s real suffering overlap, and what was a technical limitation became narrative authenticity.
This is the moment technology becomes art.
An Ethical Framework
Posthumous AI performances are sensitive territory. This project met four key criteria:
- Consent: Kilmer himself expressed his willingness to appear while still alive
- Family support: His children endorsed the project
- Industry compliance: SAG-AFTRA guidelines were followed
- Fair compensation: Kilmer’s estate received appropriate payment
The director summarized his philosophy in a single phrase:
“Together, not instead of.”
The Value Debate Around AI Creative
Placing these two cases side by side reveals the core tensions in AI creative content:
| Dimension | SPACE GREEN | As Deep as the Grave |
|---|---|---|
| AI’s role | Draft generation (1→9) | Actor replication (face + body) |
| Human’s role | Detail refinement + DI | Directorial judgment + voice selection |
| Core value | Quality gap = commercial differentiation | Narrative authenticity = artistic value |
| Debate | Making it better vs. selling it better | Tribute vs. exploitation |
| Ethics | Relatively low | Posthumous likeness rights, consent, compensation |
Hollywood continues to debate posthumous AI performances. “Posthumous AI: tribute or exploitation?” There’s no consensus yet, but As Deep as the Grave offers a practical framework — four conditions: the subject’s prior consent, family support, industry standards compliance, and fair compensation.
Insights
1. AI is a tool, not the product. As the Giantstep case demonstrates, AI-generated content itself is becoming a commodity. The competitive advantage lies in what you build on top of AI.
2. Hybrid pipelines are the realistic answer. Pure AI footage falls into the Detail Valley. SPACE GREEN — completed in 10 days by a team of 4 juniors and 1 director — proves that a small team can leverage AI to produce results that rival large studio productions.
3. The ethical framework must come before the technology. Val Kilmer’s project became moving rather than controversial because it satisfied four ethical criteria — not because the technology was impressive. As AI expands into representing deceased individuals, guidelines like SAG-AFTRA become more critical, not less.
4. “Together, not instead of” should be the guiding principle for all AI creative work. Both Giantstep and director Bruyns positioned AI as a collaborative tool rather than a replacement for human creativity. This perspective determines the long-term sustainability of AI in creative fields.
Source: From AI Cinema Briefing (YouTube)