"The amount of work that went into it. People don't see that,” Abiodun Odu, a Nollywood director, said. He had taken a break from set to speak to me about Ajaka Lori Okun, a five-minute and fifteen-second film that he says came to life after more than 600 written prompts.
"AI characters can speak English fluently, they can talk in emotions," he said, "but they might not be able to say Yoruba with emotions, because we don't yet have enough data to put into that."
Every character, every location, every frame in Ajaka Lori Okun, he says, was generated through AI, prompted one clip at a time, across more than 200 generated video sequences that Odu assembled himself on his iPad after long days on traditional film sets.
Odu, a trained dental surgeon who dropped the scalpel and first picked up the camera to become a photographer, but later found success working on Nollywood sets making commercials for consumer goods conglomerates, is among a growing group of filmmakers who are using AI tools to bring to life productions that would at best take them an entire career to make or never see the light of day.
