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AI•Computation ■ ■ ■ ■ Bolden estimates that Athena can produce CG renderings and anima- tions as much as three times faster than the multi-computer, labor-in- tensive practices currently used by competing animation facilities. But Athena isn't just a faster animation system. Athena actually cre- ates fi nished animations based on natural language input. Bolden and his team at Bit Th eory provide text-based input, and Athena produces rendered, animated output based on its understanding of the scene be- ing described. AI Legacy While Athena is unique, it has a heritage nearly as rich as the his- tory of so-called thinking machines in science fi ction. In the 1970s, a group of researchers at the University of Virginia and, later, at Carnegie Mellon University developed Alice, an open-source educational program- ming language with a drag-and-drop environment to create computer ani- mations using 3D models. In 2006, Xtranormal.com used Alice to create a system in which anyone could make small movies on a desktop computer In many ways, Athena is similar to Watson, an AI computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. Developed by IBM, Watson famously appeared on three special episodes of the television game show Jeopardy! in 2011, during which it beat both Brad Rutter, the program's biggest all-time money winner, and Ken Jennings, holder of the longest Jeopardy! championship streak. Watson received game clues as text fi les, which it then parsed and compared against its 15tb database of human knowledge. "You could think of Watson as kind of the left-brain solution," says Bolden, "whereas Athena is more creative—more of a right-brain solu- tion. Athena can understand what you say through natural language, but instead of answering a question, she shows you the results visually." Moon using rotoscoping and clean-plating techniques. Artists had to remove actors, effects, and vehicles in each shot, fi ll in what would have been behind them, and then assemble the scene back together again in 3D. Bit Theory utilized Athena to produce sequences for Transformers: Dark of the by picking characters, selecting a stage, typ- ing the characters' dialog, and giving manual instructions to the cameras. Athena takes Al- higher level of quality and quickness. Athena is an artifi cial intelli- gence (AI) that automatically knows, based on the story line, which character to put on camera, how to coordinate dialog and interac- tion with the stage, how the stage props or environment will interact with the characters (instead of the environment being just a static backdrop), and how to best render high-quality computer graphics. And Athena learns from each experience and uses that accumulated knowledge to solve future problems. "What Alice taught us was that people were on their way toward eliminating the natural language barrier," says Bolden. ice's automated ani- mation to a much A Personal Relationship With Athena, Bolden provides text-based input, and Athena produces something visual as output. Th e goal for Athena is to enable artists to spend more time being artists and less time as what Bolden refers to as "pipeline junkies," operators who have to fi gure out a lot of math and code and settings in order to produce images and animations. After entering the text, if Athena doesn't understand something, she presents a series of question marks around unknown words or phrases. Bolden can then either provide a more detailed description or simply specify a link to a visual object. Once Athena generates her output, artists can build upon those results using conventional tools, such as Autodesk's Maya or 3ds Max software. But Athena is able to watch what the artists subsequently do and adds that knowledge to her ever- growing database so that she can leverage that knowledge in the future. Bolden often refers to his creation as "she," as if Athena is just another member of the team of animators at Bit Th eory. "Allen has lived with her for the last four years in almost a relationship status, where he's learning from her and teaching her," explains Cameron Madani, Bit Th eory's director of business development. April/May 2012 39 Images ©2011 Paramount Pictures Corp.