Pictured: Barbenheimer meme created through generative AI programs Midjourney and Gen-2
In the near future, will we keep wanting to watch Hollywood movies like Oppenheimer and Barbie, works of visionary highly personal art by beloved human artists -- or will much of their work be replaced by generative AI programs?
In recent months I've been having a friendly Whatsapp debate on that question with Adam Frisby, CEO of metaverse platform developer Sine Wave Entertainment, one of the smartest technologists I'm lucky to call a pal. Even though Adam takes a highly AI maximalist position on that question!
“Every intellectual job is at risk," as he recently put it to me bluntly. "The ones which can be easily outsourced already today, will be first. Even very prestigious, difficult and stressful jobs like C-suite execs are at risk honestly. Humans can only handle summaries, AI can handle huge quantities of raw data; long term, we're at a disadvantage.”
As longtime readers to my blog might guess, I'm highly skeptical of that -- and not just as a professional writer devoted to the human aspect of technology in the Metaverse and beyond. I've been working in Silicon Valley long enough to have heard grandiose predictions like the above before (and then maybe yet before that before). I tend to think AI will just become one more technology tool among many to produce movies and other art -- but not fundamentally change who makes them. (I.E., human producers, directors, writers, actors, and others talented artists and craftspeople.)
But maybe this time the grandiose predictions are different?
Recent news around OpenAI and Sam Altman recently re-joining as its CEO after a week of confusing tumult may accelerate the issues we discuss, given the org's heavy involvement with Microsoft. Disney, historically a very litigious protector of its content, recently asked Microsoft to remove some its IP out of its AI image program, and may ultimately see Microsoft as a potential competitor.
Anyway, read our conservation and decide for yourself!
PART 1: How Artificial Intelligence May Change Movies and Music
Wagner James Au: I’m sure you saw that the Screen Actors Guild got the studios to forbid use of AI characters in movies and TV without the underlying actor’s permission. So that puts the kibosh on AI totally transforming popular culture, right?
Adam Frisby: Not at all. “Why pay for a real actor?”. Humans are expensive, notoriously difficult to work with, and the studios are investing vast sums in building someone else’s brand that they don’t even control.
(This is not to be callous, or to devalue artists' contributions to media - just that, as soon as a machine can do a human's job reliably and cost effectively, it will; no matter where or what that job is.)
WJA: But name actors are integral to funding and marketing movies. Even when it’s a CGI animated movie, studios depend heavily on having A list stars doing the voice work.
AF: Yeah; but that's just a matter of branding. AI can be tuned to reproducible results, studios could invest in their own stable of "actors" and probably will. There may be initial backlash -- it'll likely happen somewhere small first, TV maybe? Where novelty is okay.
It could happen via some VTuber initially. That's actually more likely -- low risk, already happening, has a human heavily driving it, someone gets a high profile from Twitch or YouTube, "stars" in something bigger -- low budget film or a TV series, as their character.
That goes on for a little while, the owner licenses the character more fully; precedent has been set.
WJA: But how would that supplant how Hollywood studios work with human actors, when they’re already bound not to use AI actors without permission for 3 years and SAG has no motivation whatsoever to change that in the next contract?
AF: AI versions of existing actors, and permission by the actor themselves. Hell, another route could be someone like Bruce Willis. Someone who for a tragic reason needs "AI help" to act again.
Or, it'll be someone who does something Avant Garde -- "The Film With 10,000 Endings"
However it happens, it'll start small. The studios are not fools. They're aware everyone in the industry is nervous. But that toehold will grow; and eventually the economics of brand name actors will be broken. Because the human actors -- and the supporting infrastructure (cameramen, etc) will be a huge expense for an ever decreasing proportion of the budget
VFX will be long gone by then -- that'll eventually be 5 guys running prompts over raw footage.
Look at this, this is pretty preliminary and early tech, but you can easily see how quickly it'll be able to do complex VFX shots [watch below]:
