Thank you so much, what a great and solid analysis! Beats 99,9% of my linkedin feed for sure.
I'm in the advertising film business, and there's 2 things I can already tell:
1) your second factor - audience acceptance - is irrelevant in our ecosystem as long as the quality is good enough, which it obviously already is. The 100% ai generated COKE xmas commercials were tested with audiences and people loved them, no pushback there.
2) "Studios have used these technologies to marginally reduce production costs, say 15-25%." That does not seem "marginal" to me! As we pitch each&every project against at least 2 competitors, a 20% cost advantage is a MASSIVE business advantage over the competition. I wish we could harness AI's potential to be 20% less costly than the competition (but then again, if we can, then the competition also can).
For now, these cost cutting advantages have not arrived in our ecosystem. I assume that is to a large extent based on legal uncertainties around the use of AI, and will soon change drastically once the legal frameworks get adjusted to what's technically achievable.
It is not true to say that people have enough video content available “for free” on YouTube: we either pay a subscription fee or have to watch a huge amount of video ads. This means it has to be rewarding anyhow. We might be open to spend 2 or 3 minutes watching entirely AI generated video while the technology behind is surprising, but eventually we’ll not care about how that video was made and enjoy it for its content: the story, the characters, the setting, etc. So, I believe people will eventually accept video AI except when the characters matter. Otherwise, it feels like an animation movie and these are set apart even without the involvement of AI at all.
Great piece. Thanks for shaping the landscape into scenarios, great way to view where we are going.
I’m a filmmaker working across independent feature and corporate production and already my corporate work has been transformed, GenAI is only upside BUT requires a lot of time and curation to get right so it’s not a magic bullet and not stealing everyone’s jobs, yet. Even the driest story needs to be crafted and (hopefully) always will.
Drama production benefits from AI tools in pre & post now for sure but I’m not sure actors will ever be entirely replaceable, not for the pixel or physics aspect but from the pov of how actors make character decisions, an LLM is trained on history and makes predictions but actors respond to the situation they are in which includes the environment and other actors, 2 agents riffing in character will be fascinating to see when we get it but I think (hope!) you need humans with the weight of experience to make those stories really come alive.
What will the generation who grow up on syntehtic characters think though.. they won’t know any different so I think we’re headed for Hollywood Horror eventually.
...i think you are right about the synthecism...the next generations are being raised on minecraft and roblox and fortnite etc. -- as more and more synthetic content gets fed and normalized the revolt will dcrease...color tv...widescreen...compressed h264...hammered tiny videos on phones, etc. ...the consumer continually embraces volume changes...
Love the way you lay out the scenarios here Doug. I think we'll end up somewhere on the far right half of that blob, on or a little north of the x axis. I think there could be an initial spike in consumer acceptance that takes it higher up the y axis, followed by a correction where consumers start to seek real human actors (at least in the starring roles) again. But I think they'll be cool with pretty much everything else being AI-generated. Either way, putting bounds around the potential scenarios is really useful!
I have already been mixing human actors with AI actor delivery and reads. Why bother? Because sometimes the AI does it better. Audio leads video and I can only imagine that this will be the same with AI video. Want an angrier reaction? Move the slider up a notch. Watch what happens with AI avatars on TikTok. If there's one that creates a cult of personality, some producer will license it for a TV series
Thank you so much, what a great and solid analysis! Beats 99,9% of my linkedin feed for sure.
I'm in the advertising film business, and there's 2 things I can already tell:
1) your second factor - audience acceptance - is irrelevant in our ecosystem as long as the quality is good enough, which it obviously already is. The 100% ai generated COKE xmas commercials were tested with audiences and people loved them, no pushback there.
2) "Studios have used these technologies to marginally reduce production costs, say 15-25%." That does not seem "marginal" to me! As we pitch each&every project against at least 2 competitors, a 20% cost advantage is a MASSIVE business advantage over the competition. I wish we could harness AI's potential to be 20% less costly than the competition (but then again, if we can, then the competition also can).
For now, these cost cutting advantages have not arrived in our ecosystem. I assume that is to a large extent based on legal uncertainties around the use of AI, and will soon change drastically once the legal frameworks get adjusted to what's technically achievable.
It is not true to say that people have enough video content available “for free” on YouTube: we either pay a subscription fee or have to watch a huge amount of video ads. This means it has to be rewarding anyhow. We might be open to spend 2 or 3 minutes watching entirely AI generated video while the technology behind is surprising, but eventually we’ll not care about how that video was made and enjoy it for its content: the story, the characters, the setting, etc. So, I believe people will eventually accept video AI except when the characters matter. Otherwise, it feels like an animation movie and these are set apart even without the involvement of AI at all.
Great piece. Thanks for shaping the landscape into scenarios, great way to view where we are going.
I’m a filmmaker working across independent feature and corporate production and already my corporate work has been transformed, GenAI is only upside BUT requires a lot of time and curation to get right so it’s not a magic bullet and not stealing everyone’s jobs, yet. Even the driest story needs to be crafted and (hopefully) always will.
Drama production benefits from AI tools in pre & post now for sure but I’m not sure actors will ever be entirely replaceable, not for the pixel or physics aspect but from the pov of how actors make character decisions, an LLM is trained on history and makes predictions but actors respond to the situation they are in which includes the environment and other actors, 2 agents riffing in character will be fascinating to see when we get it but I think (hope!) you need humans with the weight of experience to make those stories really come alive.
What will the generation who grow up on syntehtic characters think though.. they won’t know any different so I think we’re headed for Hollywood Horror eventually.
Smart and incisive. Well done. Thanks for this.
...i think you are right about the synthecism...the next generations are being raised on minecraft and roblox and fortnite etc. -- as more and more synthetic content gets fed and normalized the revolt will dcrease...color tv...widescreen...compressed h264...hammered tiny videos on phones, etc. ...the consumer continually embraces volume changes...
Love the way you lay out the scenarios here Doug. I think we'll end up somewhere on the far right half of that blob, on or a little north of the x axis. I think there could be an initial spike in consumer acceptance that takes it higher up the y axis, followed by a correction where consumers start to seek real human actors (at least in the starring roles) again. But I think they'll be cool with pretty much everything else being AI-generated. Either way, putting bounds around the potential scenarios is really useful!
I have already been mixing human actors with AI actor delivery and reads. Why bother? Because sometimes the AI does it better. Audio leads video and I can only imagine that this will be the same with AI video. Want an angrier reaction? Move the slider up a notch. Watch what happens with AI avatars on TikTok. If there's one that creates a cult of personality, some producer will license it for a TV series
thanks a lot. great one doug. love it.