Listen long enough to Elon Musk fans who have been hiding their Twitter replies for months, and you may begin to believe Hollywood is “over” thanks to so-called “productive” artificial intelligence. If that turns out to be true, we’ll deserve the next apocalyptic ending in any predictable AI thriller.
Forerunners of our so-called impending AI apocalypse seem to be everywhere. years passed Border first reported that Hollywood is using artificial intelligence to decide which projects to greenlight. This year, “Drake” and “The Weeknd” released a single that real human artists have never heard of, thanks to their artificial intelligence fake voices. We’ve got Star wars We put up with the trailer directed by Wes Anderson and whatever other creepy trailer was. In February, Netflix Japan was annoyed at using artificial intelligence to create a background image in the face of what the company dubiously labeled a “labor shortage.” Timbaland resurrects Biggie through artificial intelligence.
The art community warned us about AI photography trends last winter, and they’ve already gotten to this point.
The Writers Guild of America, which has been on strike since May 2, is working to mitigate potential threats from AI. His proposals, which include better pay and a refined pay structure to counter the effects of streaming, suggest that artificial intelligence “can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material; and MBA-covered [contract-covered] The material cannot be used to train artificial intelligence.” In other words, the union is working to ensure that artificial intelligence does not replace real human workers.
The good news for human artists of all kinds is that AI art in general still sucks, or at least very limited. (And yes, various AIs have already gotten into trouble for producing racist and transphobic art.) Also, any AI-only work cannot receive copyright protection;
A well-known writer and showrunner told Hollywood Reporter They said they tried ChatGPT in January and didn’t think they could write a funny joke or write anything usable without “significant creative input” from people. “When people conclude that it will replace professional writers, I think they are swallowing an Elon Musk-style fantasy about a future that is not actually connected to technology,” the showrunner said.
However, in the same article, former WGA West president Howard A. Rodman cautioned that authors should consider how AI can boost their creativity, “They should also be aware of the opportunities it offers employers to do what they love most: put downward pressure on fixed costs. ”
If you talk about the very low wages of Hollywood writers or the possibility of various creative artists being replaced by machines, you’re likely to come across a deliberately callous response or two celebrating the hypothetical demise of the “industry” and its workers. (“learn to codeThe (untrue) myth that everyone in Hollywood comes from money and that writers’ concerns are somehow different from those of other workers remains as powerful as it is damaging. Beyond that, our society’s collective collapse on empathy isn’t helping the cause.
However, even setting aside writers and artists, so-called “productive” AI still relies heavily on human workers, and some have already begun to call for exploitation in the industry.
On Monday, a day before the WGA strike began, 150 African content moderators whose labor supports the AI systems of Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT voted to unionize. Time “Despite the mental burden of the job that has left many content moderators suffering from PTSD, their jobs are among the lowest paid in the global tech industry, with some workers making as little as $1.50 an hour.”
“Beyond the workforce concerns that may accompany the rise of AI in Hollywood, there is also the risk of sinking into the uncanny valley. Does anyone really love AI-assisted aging in ‘The Irishman’?”
“As workers who power the AI revolution, we’ve been treated differently and less often than moderators for too long,” said Richard Mathenge, a former ChatGPT content moderator who worked on outsourcing firm Sama’s contract with OpenAI. Time On Monday. “Our work is equally important and also dangerous. Today we took a historic step.”
Beyond the workforce concerns that may accompany the rise of AI in Hollywood, there is also the risk of sinking into the uncanny valley. Who really likes AI-assisted aging? Irish Is that all? Now that James Earl Jones has retired from playing Darth Vader and handed over the rights to his voice to a Ukraine-based startup working with Lucasfilm to protect his booming baritone forever, will every subsequent “performance” resonate like a hollow echo? the main thing?
Other than a few corporate overlords and trolls who want to watch everything burn, who really wins anything from a future where James Dean can be “resurrected” for a new movie, where even some of our art comes from machines? for a feature Guard On the limitations of AI, artist and author James Bridle pointed out that the rise of consumer-facing AI has been a boon for tech companies – they’ve spent millions of dollars over the past few years selling the virtual idea to consumers. reality as the “future”.
Beyond the limitations of AI-generated art and its underlying labor concerns, with this type of technology in a corner in 2020, Vox’s senior culture writer Alissa Wilkinson said, “You can easily imagine a streaming service allowing viewers to pile on the couch, choose a few variants, and instantly a distant future that allows him to create a movie.Would you like a 72-minute PG-13 action-comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Adam Sandler, set in, say, Paris with a liberal bent?Click, click, click. You got it.
It’s easy to shrug off that possibility right now, but as Wilkinson points out, it could do more damage to our already outdated rhetoric. “[I]A world in which we have full control of our own experiences with art,” he wrote, “echo chambers in which we often find ourselves—what media theorist Thomas de Zengotita refers to as truths that “praise” us for protecting us from anything that might happen. annoy, annoy or surprise us – they will only become more soundproofed.
For now, however, the so-called Hollywood AI revolution (like the “metaverse”) still mostly feels half-baked – perhaps needing a talented, human writer to punch it. We better make sure we keep at least a few of these around – and maybe pay them a living wage while we’re at it.