The filmmaker could not get Tiggy the alien to cooperate. He just needed the glistening brown creature to turn its head. But Tiggy, who was sitting in the passenger's seat of a cop car, kept disobeying. At first Tiggy rotated his gaze only slightly. Then he looked to the wrong side of the camera. Then his skin turned splotchy, like an overripe fruit. The filmmaker was not on a movie set, or Mars. He was sitting at his home computer in Los Angeles using a piece of AI software called FLUX Kontext to generate and regenerate images of the alien, waiting for a workable one to appear. He'd used a different AI tool, Midjourney, to generate the very first image of Tiggy (prompt: "fat blob alien with a tiny mouth and tiny lips"); one called ElevenLabs to create the timbre of Tiggy's voice (the filmmaker's voice overlaid with a synthetic one, then pitch-shifted way up); and yet another called Runway to describe the precise shot he wanted in this scene ("close up on the little alien as they ride in the passenger seat, shallow depth of field").

An interesting question about artificial intelligence was raised by Lenore Kerrigan, the country sales director for enterprise information management group, OpenText, in an article she wrote in Business Tech. She points out that AI is here to stay, and it will get better and more powerful as time goes on. And AI, along with autonomous devices, is transforming the way we do our banking, run our businesses, and other sectors, altering basic operational and decision making within the organization yet improving efficiency and response times. Kerrigan cites the Davos 2018 World Economic Forum meeting, held earlier this year where world leaders debated the ethics of AI, with UK Prime Minister Theresa May launching the UK's Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. German chancellor Angela Merkel addreses the annual World Economic Forum on January 24, 2018 in Davos, eastern Switzerland Fabrice COFFRINI, AFP/File The primary objective of this advisory body is to work with international partners in reaching common ground on understanding "how to ensure the safe, ethical and innovative deployment of AI." Who will guard the guardsmen?