Gone are the days of six-fingered hands or distorted faces: AI-generated video is becoming increasingly convincing, attracting Hollywood, artists, and advertisers, while shaking the foundations of the creative industry.

To measure the progress of AI video, you need only look at Will Smith eating spaghetti. Since 2023, this unlikely sequence, entirely fabricated, has become a technological benchmark for the industry.

Two years ago, the actor appeared blurry, his eyes too far apart, his forehead exaggeratedly protruding, his movements jerky, and the spaghetti didn’t even reach his mouth.

The version published a few weeks ago by a user of Google’s Veo 3 platform showed no apparent flaws whatsoever.

“Every week, sometimes every day, a different one comes out that’s even more stunning than the next,” said Elizabeth Strickler, a professor at Georgia State University.

Between Luma Labs’ Dream Machine launched in June 2024, OpenAI’s Sora in December, Runway AI’s Gen-4 in March 2025, and Veo 3 in May, the sector has crossed several milestones in just a few months.

Runway has signed deals with Lionsgate studio and AMC Networks television group.

Lionsgate vice president Michael Burns told New York Magazine about the possibility of using artificial intelligence to generate animated, family-friendly versions from films like the “John Wick” or “Hunger Games” franchises, rather than creating entirely new projects.

“Some use it for storyboarding or previsualization,” steps that come before filming, “others for visual effects or inserts,” said Jamie Umpherson, Runway’s creative director.

Burns gave the example of a script for which Lionsgate has to decide whether to shoot a scene or not.

To help make that decision, they can now create a 10-second clip “with 10,000 soldiers in a snowstorm.”

That kind of pre-visualization would have cost millions before.

In October, the first AI feature film was released: “Where the Robots Grow” is an animated film without anything resembling live action footage.

For Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, Runway’s co-founder, an AI-generated feature film is not the end goal, but a way of demonstrating to a production team that “this is possible.”

Still, some see an opportunity.

In March, startup Staircase Studio made waves by announcing plans to produce seven to eight films per year using AI for less than $500,000 each, while ensuring it would rely on unionised professionals wherever possible.

“The market is there,” said Andrew White, co-founder of small production house Indie Studios.

People “don’t want to talk about how it’s made,” White pointed out. “That’s inside baseball. People want to enjoy the movie because of the movie.”

But White himself refuses to adopt the technology, considering that using AI would compromise his creative process.

Jamie Umpherson argues that AI allows creators to stick closer to their artistic vision than ever before, since it enables unlimited revisions, unlike the traditional system constrained by costs.

“I see resistance everywhere” to this movement, observed Georgia State’s Strickler.

This is particularly true among her students, who are concerned about AI’s massive energy and water consumption as well as the use of original works to train models, not to mention the social impact.

But refusing to accept the shift is “kind of like having a business without having the internet,” she said. “You can try for a little while.”

In 2023, the American actors’ union SAG-AFTRA secured concessions on the use of their image through AI.

Strickler sees AI diminishing Hollywood’s role as the arbiter of creation and taste, instead allowing more artists and creators to reach a significant audience.

Runway’s founders, who are as much trained artists as they are computer scientists, have gained an edge over their AI video rivals in film, television, and advertising.

But they’re already looking further ahead, considering expansion into augmented reality and virtual reality; for example creating a metaverse where films could be shot.

“The most exciting applications aren’t necessarily the ones that we have in mind,” said Umpherson. “The ultimate goal is to see what artists do with technology.”

Published – July 08, 2025 08:44 am IST

Meta invested in Scale AI in a deal that valued the data-labeling startup at $29 billion and brought in its 28-year-old CEO Wang [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Capgemini, a global business and technology transformation partner, and WNS, a leading digital-led business transformation and services company, announced that they have entered into a definitive transaction agreement pursuant to which Capgemini will acquire WNS. 

WNS is a leading and trusted business transformation and services partner that uniquely blends deep industry knowledge with business process management, technology, analytics and AI expertise to create market differentiation for clients. With digital-led transformation solutions deployed to clients across 8 industries where it deploys its highly automated platforms to deliver stronger business outcomes, WNS is a leader in Digital Business Process Services (BPS). 

This operating model enables strategic engagements that are critical to clients’ daily operations materialized in long-term contracts with recurring revenues streams. Through an expanded ecosystem of partners and network of delivery centers, WNS serves a large portfolio of blue-chip clients, such as United Airlines, Aviva, M&T Bank, Centrica and McCain Foods.

The high-quality business model of WNS, supported by non-linear pricing models and superior profitability has driven a c.+9% constant currency revenue growth on average over the last 3 fiscal years, to reach $1,266 million of revenue in fiscal year 2025 with an 18.7% operating margin.

Global organizations are in constant need of strategic partners to support their transformation to enhance efficiency and accelerate growth. This continues to be a key driver of the Digital BPS market and WNS targets revenue growth of +7% to +11% for FY2026.

This transaction will position Capgemini as a leader in Digital BPS blending horizontal and vertical process expertise, with a global footprint. With combined revenues of €1.9 billion in 2024 in Digital BPS, this will strengthen Capgemini’s ability to accompany clients on their business and technology transformation journeys.

The mix of WNS and Capgemini’s complementary offerings and clients will immediately unlock cross-selling opportunities. It will also lay down the foundations to build the capabilities to seize the Intelligent Operations strategic market opportunity.

The largest opportunity for global organizations to create value with Gen AI and Agentic AI lies in the fundamental redesign of their operations and business processes. It will attract a significant share of their AI investments as they seek to become AI-powered companies to lead their market. This is creating demand for a new type of business process services: Intelligent Operations.

Intelligent Operations answers these business needs, providing a consulting-led approach to transform and operate horizontal and vertical business processes leveraging Gen AI and Agentic AI. It addresses clients’ goal of efficiency, speed and agility through process hyper-automation, while significantly improving business outcomes by combining data, AI and digital.

AI technologies trigger a paradigm shift in delivering business process services: from labor-intensive services to being consulting-led and tech-driven. In parallel, client focus has shifted from efficiency gains toward end-to-end value creation and business outcomes, opening opportunities to add non-linear revenues (i.e. transaction-based, subscription-based or outcome-based models). This is creating a rapidly growing market opportunity.

Both Capgemini and WNS are already pioneering Intelligent Operations. Capgemini with its consulting-led end-to-end transformation of processes, advanced AI tools and technology stacks, and BPS platforms, while WNS has developed a set of sector-specific AI-led solutions recently augmented by the acquisition of Kipi.ai to strengthen its data, analytics and AI capabilities.

The combination of Capgemini and WNS will act as a catalyst to lead in Intelligent Operations providing the required scale and unique set of capabilities from Strategy & Transformation consulting, to horizontal and sector expertise, platform offerings to deep AI and technology capabilities.

This combination will also leverage the significant investments made by Capgemini in AI through training, offers and its 25 strategic partnerships, including Microsoft, Google, AWS, Mistral AI and NVIDIA. The Group’s leadership is recognized by its clients, with over €900 million of Gen AI bookings in 2024, and by market analysts such as Forrester, IDC and ISG.

This transaction will reinforce Capgemini as a business and transformation partner to those enterprises who want to become AI-powered businesses.

Based on calendar year 2024 published information, the combined entities would have generated a revenue of €23.3 billion at a 13.6% operating margin in 2024.

The Group expects accretion to normalized EPS, before synergies from the combination, of 4% in 2026.

Capgemini expects revenue synergies run-rate of €100 million to €140 million by the end of 2027. Costs and operating model synergies are anticipated to reach an annual pretax run-rate of between €50 million and €70 million by the end of 2027.

With the benefits of these synergies, the accretion on normalized earnings per share should reach 7% in 2027.

WNS and Capgemini have a natural cultural fit and share common values that will facilitate a smooth integration of the teams, helped by the Group’s track record of successful integrations. Furthermore, the integration will be straightforward into Capgemini’s Global Business Services activities.

The contemplated transaction will be implemented by way of a Court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement under the laws of Jersey. The transaction has been unanimously approved by both Capgemini’s and WNS’ Boards of Directors.

The transaction is subject to approval by the Royal Court of Jersey and WNS’ shareholders, as well as to receipt of customary regulatory approvals and other conditions. The closing of the transaction is expected to occur by the end of the year.

Capgemini has secured a bridge financing of €4.0 billion, covering the purchase of securities ($3.3 billion), as well as the gross debt and similar obligations of around $0.4 billion and the €0.8 billion Capgemini bond redeemed in June 2025.

The Group plans to refinance the bridge with available cash for around €1.0 billion and the balance by debt issuance.

The Group expects Q2 2025 year-on-year growth at constant currency to be slightly better than the -0.4% reported in Q1 2025. The Group also expects for H1 2025 the operating margin to be stable year-on-year at 12.4%.

Due to the nature and timing of this announcement, the actual Q2 and H1 2025 performance may slightly differ from the above-mentioned expectations. H1 2025 publication will take place as planned on July 30, 2025.

Capgemini’s financial targets for 2025 do not take into account this transaction and are therefore unchanged:

Revenue growth of -2.0% to +2.0% at constant currency; Operating margin of 13.3% to 13.5%; Organic free cash flow of around €1.9 billion.