‘Those who hate AI are insecure’: inside Hollywood’s battle over artificial intelligence
O n the picket lines outside Los Angeles film studios, artificial intelligence has become a central antagonist of the Hollywood writers’ strike, with signs warning studio executives that writers will not let themselves be replaced by ChatGPT
That hasn’t stopped tech industry players from selling the promise of a future in which AI is an essential tool for every part of Hollywood production, from budgeting and concept art, to script development, to producing a first cut of a feature film with a single press of a button.
The writer’s strike has put the spotlight on escalating tensions over whether an AI-powered production process will be a dream or a nightmare for most Hollywood workers and for their audiences.
Los Angeles’s AI boosters tout the latest disruptive technology as a democratising force in film, one that will liberate creators by taking over dull and painstaking tasks like motion capture, allowing them to turn their ideas into finished works of art without a budget of millions or tens of millions of dollars. They envision a world in which every artist has a “holographic vision board”, which will enable them to instantly see any possible idea in action.
Critics say that studio executives simply want to replace unionized artists with compliant robots, a process that can only lead to increasingly mediocre, or even inhuman, art.
All these tensions were on display last week when tech companies that specialise in AI, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Nvidia, were among the sponsors of an “AI on the Lot” conference in Hollywood, which attracted an estimated 400 people to overflowing sessions about how artificial intelligence was disrupting every facet of film production. One tech investor described the mood
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