The opening of part 1 feels even more apt now that actors have joined writers in striking. AI can’t adlib. It can only be programmed to reproduce or remix the work of real people. And it will do so with diminishing returns. We’re already seeing this with ChatBot, which has – predictably – become even less reliable over time.
Also predictable?
Many people continue to blame writers and actors while siding with the studio executives responsible for everything they claim to hate about Hollywood. One of the more cited reasons for the strike is that studios want to start replacing performers with AI. For example, they want to pay extras for their likeness once, and then use it in perpetuity, however they want (big yikes). Someone said they only cared about the production assistants, makeup artists, costume designers, crew members, caterers, etc. hurt by the strike – as if that doesn’t threaten their jobs, too. AI doesn’t need guidance or makeup or food, and who is the crew going to film?
Even if you know nothing about the film industry, common sense is adequate to predict the avalanche of negative consequences. Of course, some people don’t care about anyone who works in that industry, or any other industry (food, hospitality, retail) that directly or indirectly benefits. The former governor of New York championed a film tax credit. Whatever my feelings on that governor and some of his other policies, it was a good program that worked as intended, generating jobs and revenue for the state, even/especially regions other than NYC. Despite that, opponents routinely attacked the program, not because it was bad but because it was his. Fortunately that baby did not get thrown out with the bathwater, but efforts to weaken it continue.
I live in Western New York. Like most writers, I have a day job. I used to teach full time in a different state. I moved a few times. I had kids. Now I’m a sub (all I had left was the infamous $300 portfolio, but I don’t know what new hoops I have to jump through for certification, and if I even want to). Sometimes I’ve been fortunate enough to supplement my income working in film. I was a featured extra in a few films that hired hundreds of extras and lots of local crew members, all of whom the studio provided with locally catered meals – to say nothing of lodging for anyone from out of town or the extra money local hires put back into local businesses. All that goes away the more anything gets displaced by AI. Why film on location if you can program any person or place you want? So what if the audience already has CGI exhaustion!
Executives would replace the audience with AI if AI had a disposable income. Instead they settle for programming and fine-tuning the audience into easy-to-target demographics. There’s a common misconception that the audience is the customer. That’s true, but only up to a point. The audience is also the product. The goal of media from an executive perspective is delivering as much of that product to advertisers and marketers as they can. And as much as some people claim the studios are delivering a product they do not want, gatekeepers don’t greenlight projects if the data doesn’t support it. The only agenda they push is the one that lines their pockets. They like tried and true with a twist (even if that twist is sometimes as simple as pandering to the sherbet crowd instead of vanilla). The artists operate within that framework, and the audience is left to choose from whatever makes it through.
More original content makes it through if original content sells. Limiting voices will not increase choice – unless you’re happy being limited to CGI and Nostalgia Bait – or the occasional gems filmmakers sneak in disguised as either. Or maybe the new dominating genres will be Pink and Explosions if the industry learns the wrong lessons from Barbenheimer. Even if you don’t care about film, others do. An attack on the arts is an attack on our humanity, and the ways in which we express ourselves and connect with each other. I want more people to have more opportunities to participate in the arts, not less.
Technology can be a useful tool to connect people.
It can not be a substitute for connection.
