Ask HN: What am I supposed to do after I’m “disrupted”? Work in video and CG

I work in video / filmmaking / ads in London. Most of the work in this space is short form video for YouTube / Instagram and TV.

Now I am seeing the video generating AI (imagen video from Google on the front page) and I’m 100% sure a good percentage of the work will vanish. There’s loads of work that ad agencies will just hire an AI prompt guy to generate for ads. Big companies will still make ads, of course, but smaller gigs that keep the whole industry afloat? What about even 10 million $ shots with CG characters that will now become commonplace?

I’ve retrained before. I started off as an editor, then did VR video, now moved into CG. I’m pretty good at my job - I’ve worked on stuff for Dell and Apple, including stuff you’ve probably seen.

It’s funny to think I might have to retrain yet again. I didn’t expect image generation AI to be the next big leap. I was already moving into more storytelling content (ie documentaries) because that’s more defensible against AI. But I expected 3-4 years before video generation would just come out.

Now it seems like it’s happening so quickly I’m not sure they won’t have good stuff out in 6 months to a year.

So - HN - what do I do now? And what about the other fellas in my industry who will be out of a job? In my estimate, we are talking about tens of thousands.

To counter the obvious: I have learnt web dev at one point I thought I’d make the jump, even started learning React but I found the work to be mind numbing. I just love making images. But I feel like Pierre Auguste Renoir’s who was a plate painter in France and did a good living out of it - until the process was industrialised and he struggled (maybe for the rest of his life? I don’t quite recall).

To counter the second suggestion: AI prompt design is not image making as far as it would interest me. I also don’t think there will be a huge learning curve. Becoming a filmmaker on my standard requires about 10 years experience or an excellent school (of which there are maybe 10-20 in the world). I would imagine AÍ promoting will be done by the lowest paid interns available.

What do I do HN?

Learn the new AI tools and market yourself as an AI video production consultant.

I suggest becoming an expert user of generative AI systems. You can start by exploring Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, then move on to video systems once those start becoming available.

Effective prompt design is a very deep subject, and one that is changing all the time.

My optimistic version of all of this is that people like yourself will be able to continue doing the work you are doing today... but better, and faster. You'll be able to produce higher quality work because the generative AIs will be able to speed up a whole bunch of the more time-consuming tasks for you, allowing you to spend more time on the creative and editorial side of things.

I believe people with genuine skill, talent and taste will produce better work with the assistance of generative AI than people that do not have that existing background.

I might be wrong! I hope I'm right.

If you were able to retrain in the same industry on different jobs 3 times, learnt web development, you are reading HN / are tech literate and are aware of the coming changes in the industry such as Deep Learning : don't worry. You're on top of the rest of workers in this industry. You will eventually find your new niche skills, and even if you don't, being on top of your current field you have a few years runaway ;)

I wonder about that. Sometimes when technology makes people 10x more productive society responds by increasing the demand for what they can do by a factor of ten.

One example: I'm running an early-stage startup. If an explainer video for my product will cost me $20,000 I'm probably not going to commission one. If it costs $2,000 then maybe I will.