Wētā FX Deepens Its AI Strategy With New AMD Partnership

Wētā FX and tech hardware company AMD have unveiled a memorandum of understanding to explore next-generation rendering and AI technologies they say will streamline and enhance visual effects production at the New Zealand-based VFX powerhouse.

The collaboration will focus on several R&D strategies, including:

• New, power-efficient software leveraging modern compute architectures to power the next generation of capturing and transferring actor performances to fantastical creatures in an on-set environment.
• Building on the history of Deep image processing at Wētā FX, create an extended array of tools to unlock and accelerate the emerging field of volumetric workflows.
• Utilize AMD CPU and GPU integration to power software providing networks of AI models running interactive sessions with better artistic control and flexibility.

According to a release from the companies, the new initiative reflects a shared goal of addressing the growing technical demands of large-scale, VFX-heavy cinematic storytelling. AMD director of strategic partnerships – M&E, John Canning, explained:

As the demands for creating cutting-edge visuals continue to grow in today’s biggest stories, we are proud to work alongside Weta FX—a studio renowned for its extraordinary talent and relentless drive to define the frontier of next-generation tools and technology. Together, we are helping shape the future of cinematic storytelling through breakthrough innovation and artistry.

Wētā CEO Daniel Seah noted that the studio’s history of internal innovation positions it to capitalize on recent advances in AI:

Wētā FX has always been at the forefront of technology innovations that serve our storyteller clients best, bringing their visions to life for audiences around the world to enjoy. By partnering with AMD, we look forward to leveraging the potential that AI brings to artists in the movie-making process.”

CTO Kimball Thurston added that AMD has long powered Wētā’s rendering backbone:

AMD has powered our CGI rendering for years. With this MOU, we are looking to create tools for the next generation of storytelling as we integrate AI into an artist-centric creative experience.

In a related move last month, Wētā announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build custom AI tools for VFX production, tools the company says it’s deliberately designing to function “not with chatbots or text prompts,” but to give artists intuitive, interactive control over complex workflows. Wētā FX’s CTO, Kimball Thurston, told us:

Our fundamental policy is that we believe in the beauty and provenance of our clients’ data, and that of artists around the world. Any training we do for generic tools will be using our own data, rights-managed external datasets, and synthetic data we are generating …”

That pledge, to train AI models exclusively on Wētā’s managed datasets and synthetic assets, rather than scraped or public data, directly addresses one of the main concerns of AI critics. Certainly, other anxieties must be addressed, but as Wētā ventures further into AI-powered VFX tools, it’s refreshing to see the company commit to building in-house, rights-respecting models.