OPINION | AI-ChatGPT: AI in the Arts Is the Destruction of the Film Industry. We Can’t Go Quietly
What does it mean to be human?
You look human, you act human, you learn lessons, you have challenges, you feel emotions.
And yet, in 2023, we’ve shrunk decidedly away from being human.
The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) is currently on strike against the AMPTP, the representation of the Hollywood studios and streamers. A number of demands were made and were met with the expected pushback, but one pushback was alarming: the refusal to even have a conversation about the potential for AI to displace screenwriters in films and series.
As a WGA writer, a Directors Guild of America (DGA) director, a former Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) board member, former SAG negotiating committee member, and coder who holds a UCLA degree in computer science and digital media management, I knew this signaled that they were not only thinking about using AI to displace us, but that they had already begun.
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, but I refer to it as “Automatic Imitation.” In short, AI is an algorithm that is fed a wealth of information and given a task, and it then delivers the result based on the information it’s been fed. There are more complexities, but that is the basic design and function of AI. And it is being used in the Arts for greed, trained on all our past work.
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This is how I believe it’s going to play out:
It starts with AI-written scrips and digitally-scanned actors, either image or voice actors. This scanning is already in practice; in fact, some talent agencies are actively recruiting their clients to be scanned. What this would mean for the actor is that they would get 75 cents on the dollar, and their digital image can be triple and quadruple booked. Of course, you’re not getting the actor; you’re getting a copy of them.
The next step will be films customized for a viewer based on their viewing history, which has been collected for many years. Actors will have the option to have their image “bought out” to be used in anything at all. Viewers will be able to “order up” films—for example, “I want a film about a panda and a unicorn who save the world in a rocket ship. And put Bill Murray in it.”
From there I believe viewers will be given the ability to be digitally scanned themselves, and pay extra to have themselves inserted in these custom films. You’ll also start to see licensing deals made with studios, so that viewers can order up older films like “Star Wars” and put their face on Luke Skywalker’s body, and their ex-wife’s face on Darth Vader’s body, and so on.
You can also expect to see the training of AI programs on older, hit TV series in order to create new seasons. “Family Ties,” for example, has 167 episodes, comprising seven seasons. An AI program could easily be trained on this to create an eighth season.
All to say, AI has to be addressed now or never.
I believe this is the last time any labor action will be effective in our business. If we don’t make strong rules now, they simply won’t notice if we strike in three years, because at that point, they won’t need us.
The future I’m describing rings true for many, though some have told me that they don’t believe that viewers want to see AI-generated images, or see themselves in AI films, or watch regurgitations of past films.
I believe they are wrong: Viewers have already been conditioned for AI film, because we have gotten away from being fully human.
The author, Justine Bateman.
If we were in 1975 and we asked people what they thought of these AI images, they’d most likely furrow their brow and remark on its artificial nature. But in 2023, our eyes have been trained on faces that have been amended by plastic surgery, by Instagram and TikTok filters. People are now more accustomed to seeing artificial faces than they are fully natural human faces
Manufactured AI images are just one click away on the false imagery dial.
EDITOR IN CHIEF
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