Justine Bateman won’t name names, but a TV showrunner friend once came to her with a dilemma: Their team was well into shooting the second season of their show, and a network executive had an idea: A character in the pilot wasn’t going over well with viewers, so they wanted to replace him with a different character, using a bit of AI. The showrunner, and actor-director Bateman, were understandably furious. “When you change the beginning of something, you change the creative trajectory,” Bateman says. “It takes away what was set up in the pilot, and it doesn’t make sense, so people are going to be shocked when they see episodes three or four.” Using AI may have seemed like an easy solution for executives, but it was disastrous for the showrunners.
But AI is increasingly becoming a part of the TV industry, with potentially huge costs for the industry. WGA and SAG-Aftra made a big fuss about AI potentially taking jobs during last year’s Hollywood walkouts, but Recent Reports According to CVL Economics, 203,800 entertainment jobs in the US are likely to be “disrupted” by AI by 2026, making the technology a terrifying game changer for television and the entertainment industry as a whole.
While the use of AI is still considered something of a landmine in Hollywood, with most carefully avoiding public skepticism and the (rightful) perception that they’re replacing humans with computers, that doesn’t mean AI is already ubiquitous. “A lot of what people are calling ‘AI’ has been around for the last decade,” says Emily St. James, a TV writer, podcaster, and cultural critic. Disney+ is Speaker He transformed the hoarse voice of Mark Hamill, who was 68 years old at the time, into the voice of 20-year-old Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian.
The B.B.C. Amazon-MGM Studios has admitted to using AI to create marketing materials (including some bizarrely inaccurate ones) for shows like Doctor Who and Fallout. AI image of Los AngelesAnd Banijay, the global conglomerate behind more than 200 reality TV shows, including Deal or No Deal and Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Just released AI Creative Fund Create a new program. Already released Fake Showis an Italian series in which celebrities improvise comedy scenes generated by AI.
“AI doesn’t do quality work, AI just does a good enough job”… Keeping Up With the Kardashians. Photo: Landmark Media/AlamyThat doesn’t mean AI can produce entire shows, though. Not yet. “There’s still a big gap between machine learning simplifying technical processes in ways humans can’t and ‘dominating TV,'” St. James says. “Maybe I’m whistling past my grave, but I haven’t seen anything quite as convincing as the hype yet.”
Others agree, with creative director Lauren Fisher saying, “From what I’ve seen, all the pure ‘let’s have an AI do it all’ stuff is awful, but it’s novelty so I just admire it.” TV producer Benjamin Field adds, “AI can’t make quality stuff, it can only be good enough.” One showrunner quips anonymously, “AI will never replace good stuff, for the same reason that sex robots will never replace the real thing.”
“I think AI can do the mundane work,” says Guy Branum, a writer and producer who has worked on shows like Hacks, The Other Two, and The Mindy Project. “I was once tasked with writing the VMAs bios, which basically consisted of copying old bios and updating them to include current talent. ChatGPT could do that with the right oversight, but all it can really do is steal from existing work and summarize it in the most formulaic way.” But if a show has an established blueprint, like Big Brother, for example, then it’s a lot harder to write. Or for a show like “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” it may not be a question of “if” we’ll get to see AI-generated challenges and scripts, but rather “when.”
It’s more a question of “when” than “if,” but formulaic shows like Ru Paul’s Drag Race could soon be subject to AI material. Photo: Gerard Gethings and Greg BaileyBeing so reflective, most experts say AI probably won’t write great comedy, or at least topical satire like we see in shows like “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.” Still, there are plenty of TV shows that aren’t sharp or timely, from Netflix dating shows to Hallmark Christmas movies, all of which could conceivably be influenced by AI material. Of course, more channels and streaming services mean more content, and it all has to be written by someone or something.
“In the next six to 12 months, you’re going to see FAST (free ad-supported TV) or social media channels develop AI content,” Field says. “It’s probably going to be made by minimal creators and there’s no real money being spent on it, but it’s going to be out there somewhere. It might do some funny stuff, but it’s not going to change the world. It’s just going to be cheaper and less good.”
But that doesn’t mean creators are grudgingly embracing the technology. Field himself Co-founded the company They’re dedicated to creating “ethical, policy-based” synthetic media. “We’re in a terrible situation where budgets are being cut and AI has the ability to create content cheaper and faster,” Field said. “I don’t necessarily see it as something that’s going to force us into a corner and take away all our jobs, but I do think that as an industry we need to do better and work towards the future in a more sustainable way. Let’s take all the tools that are available to us and use them to create something new.”
Other creators are trying to thwart the rise of AI. Voice Actors Guild of America Nava has taken an active stance against the mistreatment of the group by overzealous executives and producers, and they’re not only working to change the voice-over industry, but lobbying the U.S. Congress for legal protections. Anti-Counterfeiting Law And that AI Fraud Prevention ActBoth are currently in the legislative process.
Television shows that are neither crisp nor timely are perfect for AI processing… Love is Blind. Photo: NetflixUnder copyright law, unlike a person’s name, portrait, or likeness, Currently not covered A person’s voice is a “voiceprint” of just three seconds. Credible copy using AI(In 2020, it would have taken roughly six hours of audio to achieve the same results.) This has resulted in some high-profile upsets. Scarlett Johansson was “infuriated” after learning that ChatGPT had used a voice that was “eerily similar to mine, so similar that close friends and the press couldn’t tell the difference” without her consent. Amazing deepfakesSome of them used fake voiceovers of President Biden to discourage people from voting in state primaries.
In the entertainment world, these cheap and easy voiceprints have made it much faster to get a busy actor to re-record a few lines, but also allowed companies to create large volumes of dialogue using an actor’s existing work. Veteran BAFTA-winning voice actor Cissy Jones says that a few years ago she found her voice in multiple productions on multiple websites, despite never having contributed to a single project. Fans of her show, The Owl House, were editing videos using her voice, saying lines she never recorded, which “quickly became quite pornographic,” she says.
“This was done without my consent and of course with no control over how it was used and no compensation whatsoever,” Jones said, adding that even though he’s an adult, he would be particularly troubled if such AI creations used the voices of child actors. “You can imagine that this is happening soon.” Jones’ voice was fed into an AI engine, and Jones said he had heard the sound engineer was asked to do so by the client to save money on script changes. They want voice actors to be able to decide whether they want a digital replica of their voice, and whether they have control and compensation every time their voice is used. To this end, the group Etoboxit has its own database of actors’ voiceprints, all of which are available for creators to use.
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After newsletter promotionThough fan edits using Jones’ voice aren’t allowed, some are optimistic that AI might create alternate-universe versions of fan-favorite shows. While the idea of studios being able to churn out new episodes of “I Love Lucy” or “The Brady Bunch” may seem odd from an artistic standpoint, some are hopeful that animated series like “The Simpsons” and “South Park” will see the value (and revenue potential) in letting fans make their own “episodes.”
“Maybe you’ll say, ‘Please put me in that episode. I want to be friends with the main character’… You could be on The Simpsons in no time.” Edward Saatchi, CEO Fable Simulationhis company says. Showrunner The company wants to put TV production in the hands of viewers. “Maybe you’re at home and you finish watching a particular season of a TV show,” he said. “You click to watch the next episode and you say, ‘I want to be in that episode. I want to be friends with the main character,’ or, ‘I want it to be roughly like this.’ We want to make it easier for you to tell original stories and make a TV show about your life.”
The showrunners also produce their own original programming, including: Deguchi Valleyis a satirical animated series that “stars” Silicon Valley billionaires. It has already released two episodes and is calling on its 1,000 users (7,500 on a waiting list) to create more. Users can enter prompts of 10-15 words to create full-scale scenes that run from 2 to 16 minutes. A jury of filmmakers and creators will be selected to choose the 20 best episodes, and Saatchi said the episode creators will receive a cash prize and a cut of stream revenue.
“We want to create something that will stand the test of time,” Saatchi said. “It has to be plausible that you’d love to sit down with your friends and watch that episode of Exit Valley. It has to be believable that it’s actually cool, not just because it was made by an AI.”
So-called amateur creators also dominate other markets with 295 million subscribers. Netflix Being watched around the world Mr. BeastCheck out our YouTube channel every week. The most popular stars Presenting the latest work Unconventional In fact, YouTube is already the most popular streaming service on TV, accounting for roughly 10% of U.S. connected TV viewership, more than any other service, an estimated 4.95 billion active users World wide.
“Traditional TV is already being disrupted,” says cultural critic and media expert Doug Shapiro. “For years, the argument has been that YouTube isn’t competitive and isn’t professionally producing content. But that 10% doesn’t even reflect mobile or PC viewing; it’s the percentage of people turning on the TV in their living room and watching YouTube. Disruption from below is already happening. The real question now with AI is whether these tools will add fuel to the fire and drive the tens of millions of creators who are already making their own content even further up the quality and performance curve, increasingly competing with Hollywood for people’s time.”
“To use a Game of Thrones analogy, Netflix vs. Disney is like House Targaryen vs. House Lannister, except there’s an army of the dead at the wall: tens of millions of individual creators,” Shapiro added.
As professionally produced content becomes interchangeable with consumer and AI-produced content, this sea change could have far-reaching effects on Hollywood beyond the loss of 200,000 jobs. If DIY AI TV becomes widespread, it could turn the entire concept of television upside down, upending art and fame as we know it. Or, as Saatchi puts it, if AI continues to make its way into TV, “you won’t get your 15 minutes of fame. You’ll get seven seasons and a syndication deal.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
