$2.5 Million Future Vision XPRIZE Goes to AI-Generated Trailer

Director Jeff T. Thomas won the inaugural $2.5 million Future Vision XPRIZE last month for an AI-generated proof-of-concept trailer for his feature project "The Gifted." Google and Range Media Partners, through their 100 Zeroes initiative, will now help develop the trailer into a full-length film.

Thomas, working under the moniker "Jeff Synthesized," created the three-minute trailer around a single prompt: depicting "a future worth building toward." The trailer follows an 11-year-old boy who builds an AI version of his late mother that quietly begins saving lives. The story draws partly on Thomas' own childhood — he lost his mother at 14 to an undiagnosed brain tumor.

Who judged the prize?

The panel included astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, novelist Neal Stephenson, Google's Mira Lane, Salesforce executive John Zissimos and "Star Trek" steward Rod Roddenberry. Roughly 2,500 participants entered; the top five reached the judges.

The entrants were not required to use AI, but the prevalence of AI in the final submissions was, Tyson told Variety, "evidence that AI is preoccupying people's thoughts."

Tyson called the winning trailer a "clever construct" for the way it flipped fears about the technology's "all-knowing" nature into a tool that connects people to help each other. "The choice of the number one was unanimous," he said.

Tyson is not, however, rooting for fully AI-generated cinema. Audiences, he argues, go to movies because "we want to see what humans can do" and will demand "human creativity, not machine creativity."

"[AI] will raise the bar on creativity," Tyson said. "You can't just be an artist aping the work of other artists because AI can do that. The value of that will drop in the workplace, but something that's truly creative that comes out of the deepest parts of the minds of someone who dreamt it — I don't see AI coming for that anytime soon."

What did Roddenberry want from the winner?

Roddenberry said he looked for a project that could be "the next 'Star Trek'" — one leaving audiences believing the world the trailer presents is one they could aspire to.

"Is [the story] believable? No," he admitted. "It's make believe. It can't connect it exactly to reality, but I think it's just a beautiful story of how technology, especially something like AI, which is so feared today, can have a positive message in it."

Range Media CEO Peter Micelli said the company invested in the prize to showcase how people use AI tools in the film industry and to source new stories from contestants worldwide. The eventual film will cost "roughly $10 million" and will not be AI generated, he said, but the technology could mimic the look of a film costing ten times that.

"This reality is here," Micelli said. "This tool is very, very powerful. And I would be more concerned about us not being involved in these things because we need to be on the ground floor so we can advise our clients and partners that are established in Hollywood on [how] this is a reality, and everyone needs to be aware of what it is."

Will the feature itself be made with AI?

Thomas does not plan to make an AI film. He promised the eventual movie will use AI only as a tool, citing his work directing episodes of Amazon's "House of David" and his own experimentation with AI models. He also rejects the industry's tendency to write AI off as a killer of creativity.

"Audiences are still expecting $25 million-looking episodes, but you might have $10 million, you might have $12 million," Thomas said. "What AI can do is fill in the gaps between those to still provide the audience with something they want and still allow the studios to make the material for what they can afford. So, creatively wise, I think it will make entertainment better, because you won't be as limited as we have been up until this point."

The director frames "The Gifted" as a vehicle for a positive view of AI, both narratively and as a production tool, at a moment when many in Hollywood fear for jobs and parts of the public worry about the technology's world-ending potential. The challenge he set himself — a hopeful film with no antagonist — was its own hurdle.

"I wanted to follow a character that became obsessive, compulsive about trying to bring his mother back," Thomas told Variety. "In the movie that we'll see, she admits to not being his actual mother, but she does actually end up helping him, helping the world, and hopefully this will be something that will be imitated by technology people, and we can actually do some good in the world."

Thomas, a veteran of dozens of television episodes and music videos featuring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Melissa Leo, now moves toward his feature debut — with a $2.5 million prize, unanimous jury approval and studio backing behind it.