Avail Hopes to Sell Hollywood on Using AI to Sort Through Scripts

While every industry is looking for ways to harness AI to gain an edge over the competition, few have had as fraught a relationship with the technology as Hollywood. Even so, a new startup, Avail, announced the beta launch of its script summary platform, which it says will save film and television producers from having to read through long drafts to choose which ones they want to turn into a blockbuster.

Built atop OpenAI’s GPT-4, Avail claims its AI tool is fine-tuned to experience minimal hallucinations and provide easy document scanning without having to first train on user data, plus no length limits and high security. After a 30-day free trial, a subscription costs $250/month.

A standalone paid ChatGPT plan that allows for customization costs $20 a month.

“We hope to give script readers the superpower of 10x-ing their output, similar to what Excel accomplished for accountants in the 1980s,” Avail co-founder and CEO Chris Giliberti told Decrypt. “Our solution delivers a big productivity boost.

“Script analysis—even with Avail—requires human judgment,” Giliberti acknowledged. “With Avail, script readers have more time for the deep thinking work involved with assessing the creative quality and potential of submissions.”

More and more projects are coming online geared towards movie, television, and video game companies, creating a cottage industry to help entertainment industry workers who need to do more work with shorter turnaround times and lower costs.

During the months-long WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes earlier this year, AI was critical to the contract negotiations and demands. Writers and actors railed against Hollywood producers using AI to recreate actors or write new scripts based on older content without permission or proper compensation.

He also said that Avail is much less likely to make things up.

AI hallucination refers to the habit of generative AI models to generate false or untrue statements when responding to user prompts—and it’s a common failing across services. In October, former Fugees’ member Pras Michel’s new legal counsel filed a motion for a fresh trial, claiming AI hallucinations led to Michel’s conviction on charges of money laundering and witness tampering.

Others working on projects geared towards Hollywood include Lore Machine, which uses generative AI to create production-ready storyboards based on text prompts.

“Our goal, and what we’re building, we like to look at it as multimodal,” Lore Machine founder Thobey Campion told Decrypt. “It can pull multiple systems in for text synthesis, and it can use multiple systems both proprietary and [third party] for media generation.”

Looking to the future, Giliberti said Avail is working with partners, including Range Media Group, on a “ comprehensive suite of tools” developed to cater to the executive side of the entertainment industry.

“We’re working with Range to create custom models focused on budgeting and production planning use cases, as well as business affairs insights,” he said.

While Avail did not disclose how much has been invested in the company, Giliberti said Avail’s investors are venture capitalist Alexis Ohanian and General Catalyst. Other investors include Advancit Capital and Liontree.

“Amidst the boom of AI-powered apps, Avail stands out given the team’s unique combination of Chris’ producing experience and John’s tech pedigree,” Ohanian said. “We’re inspired by their vision of developing new technology that creates more exposure for Hollywood’s creator class.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.