Better Pay and AI
You probably at this point will have heard of how there is a writer and actors strike in Hollywood right now. For the record, I am in full support of fair pay for work done… I have several family members who are in the film industry and for all the hard work they do they deserve every penny.
This is not just a Hollywood issue, Many industries are facing massive upheaval over the arrival of consumer AI and all the jobs that they have the ability to replace.
While the argument for having better pay is a no-brainer, the case for preventing AI taking their jobs is a more challenging one.
We all secretly hope that businesses have a greater sense of ethics that would prevail and bring them to the table with a new fair deal in hand that pleases everybody. However generally speaking, business is business, and business is out to make money. Business does not care about your feelings, your family, or your well being, it only cares about making money. Anything that doesn’t make money gets cut.
Striking and protesting has its place in society when there are obvious wrongs being done, but I am concerned that if this protest becomes a longer stretch of time, it will alienate many consumers (who sadly don’t understand or care about the lives that make up the entertainment industry) that the production companies and other powers that be will simply take any money they had chalked for writing and actors, an put it elsewhere, and move.
My fear is that this will speed up the adoption of AI to replace many aspects of what writers contribute to in the process of film-making. This is probably obvious to most but I certainly believe it is easier to speak from a position of strength than a place of weakness, thus I always consider what opportunities can arise when new technology arises.
Would it be wise to embrace AI in your workflow? Could writers embrace AI to improve their workflow, so that they can create more great content? As I have said in the past, AI could be the seed of inspiration from which amazing things can grow but I don’t believe AI should be used verbatim to create stories or plotlines. In high pressure environments such as episode writing, AI could be an amazing tool for breaking writer’s block and creating raw ideas, to be edited and harnessed by humanity.
Actors are concerned about their likeness being used without permission. Could the proper channels be set up to allow for legal use of likeness, paying a $1 for every image, and thus allowing an actor to sue anybody else that uses their image for profit? Could the actors use a “Hollywood” AI to create a database and thus create an IP that then all aspiring actors could scan themselves into, and get fairly paid for?
How does this not prevent new actors and filmmakers from creating? The answer is it shouldn’t. Using AI to harness and distribute your likeness for profit is a big-money plan, and star power is cyclical. There is only so much Nicolas Cage, Tom Cruise, or Ryan Reynolds* that viewers can stand before they crave something new, and the desire for original content in an AI age will drive the indie market to new levels, probably using other forms of AI to achieve things only thought possible in big budget movies until recently.
So, to summarize, AI is powerful, and the pace it is developing is staggering. It should cause concern, but as long as we create and follow ethically sound guidelines in its use, We have a bright future ahead of us. Humans first, AI Second.
*For the record, I like Nicolas Cage, Tom Cruise and Ryan Reynolds*
