This summer, Las Vegas will debut a new experience: Wizard of Oz in the sphere. It’s helping Google and AI.
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“The power of generating AI, coupled with Google’s infrastructure and expertise, helps us achieve extraordinary achievements,” Jim Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of Sphere Entertainment, said in a statement provided to Mashable. “We need a partner who can bound the line with our team on Sphere Studios and Magnopus, and Google is the only company that can handle the challenge of the highest resolution LED screen in the world.”
No matter you have been to Las Vegas, you may be familiar with the field. Its 580,000 square feet of LED display is wrapped around the venue. The interior of the unique venue, which can accommodate nearly 17,600 people, also has a wraparound LED screen and is aimed at 16k.
The sphere previously showed movies made specifically for the venue. However, this year, it will showcase existing films for the first time, a classic film from 1939 Wizard of Oz. As Wall Street Journal Report, doing this is not that simple task; it is actually a process.
“Very very, very, very big, very difficult” Wall Street Journal Reported by Google’s AI Foundation Director of Research Steven Hickson. “In some scenes, the scarecrow’s nose is like 10 pixels.”
Why is this a problem? The indoor display of the sphere is more than just 170 million pixels.
Reformatting The Wizard of Oz For the world’s largest screen, the field brings the Google DeepMind team to help you create a whole new experience with AI.
The generated AI is still controversial in the film industry
The obvious use of AI is high-end images, and Google does that. Not only does AI make it bigger by adjusting the image, it can also enhance the resolution of the image by filling in any missing details in the original image. This helps solve the problem. While the upgrade of AI may be the least controversial use of AI in art or filmmaking, it can also produce some disastrous results. take exampleThis AI upgrade screenshot from one episode I love Lucy On blue light (click on the image below to see what we mean).
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Google’s AI team works on this big project, and The Wizard of Oz Rights holder Warner Bros. found that it is unlikely we can see any such AI upgrade problem. but, Wall Street Journal The report also includes small pre-and-after samples of Google AI work The Wizard of Oz For the sphere, glitches such as AI artifacts can be clearly seen.
Mixable light speed
However, Sphere Experience can go a step further than video upgrades.
As Magazine According to reports, Google uses its Generative AI model from its Gemini family, including VEO 2 and Imagen3, to reimagine the entire shot with an extended background and include missing characters in the view. This means that the audience will see beyond what the camera initially captured in the frame. Google’s AI technology will generate these extensions based on the entire movie of its full-length movie, based on what it believes may exist.
Again, this is not just about enhancing the image to display the artist’s work on a larger screen. Filmmakers shoot in specific ways and frame them to achieve artistic purposes, and the generated AI can damage the original vision.
Earlier this month, similar generative AI entertainment activities were all the rage on social media for all the wrong reasons. Users on X uploaded an AI entertainment video shot by film producer Andrei Tarkovsky. For example, in one scene, Generative AI recreates the still lens so that the camera moves 360 degrees around the actor. The post received over 4,000 likes.
However, another X user criticize Use AI to recreate Tarkovsky’s vision.
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User The Kino Corner said: “If the camera should be moved, then Tarkovsky will move the camera.”
The criticism received more than 305,000 likes.
In the film industry and the art world as a whole, generated AI remains a very controversial topic. Mashable has previously been opposed to the use of AI in opposition to films. Barbarians and Late night with the devil.
But, it seems Wizard of Oz in the sphere It is unlikely to cause too much controversy, as it was created for a very specific event that can only be experienced in one venue in Las Vegas.
Having said that, Wizard of Oz in the sphere It can help mainstream AI use in film production and lead to wider adoption in the industry. It is expected that there will be many eyes on the sphere even without physical experience.
Wizard of Oz in the sphere Opened on August 28, 2025.
