Dan Ring is an expert in empowering VFX artists with cutting-edge research. He began his 20-year career by creating tech to analyze surgery videos (so that no one else would have to), then moved to Foundry to develop CopyCat, the Nuke machine-learning tool that applies corrections to sequences based on a small number of frames.

Now, Dan has joined Chaos to help implement machine learning in its visualization products. In this conversation with Chris, Dan covers just about every aspect of modern CG, including generative AI, Gaussian Splats and NeRFs, the surprising VFX roles that AI might not replace, and the steps Chaos is taking to ensure users have access to helpful but unintrusive tools that are ethically sound.