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Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

latimes.com

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Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#71

Post by GravelRocks »

jondwillis wrote: post #41

> We’ve heard a lot about the ways that studios want to reserve the right to use AI — to create endlessly usable digital replicas of actors, to generate scripts that writers will be paid lower rates to fix up. Does anyone know of ongoing attempts to achieve these kinds of products now ? Seems like vaporware right now

It for sure is something that people are trying to do. The weird Twitch AI Seinfeld jumps to mind. You can find a few different versions by just searching "script writing AI" or "Movie making AI" but I have no desire to sift through that trash pile. I think we're pretty far away from making something that is appealing outside of the novelty or "so bad it's good."

On the other hand, I'm not sure if you couldn't just use AI to write/generate a lot of children's programming. It's already highly formulaic, parents only halfass pay attention to it, and kids are exactly highly decerning critics. Sure some kids might be very misguided and confused by the AI media babysitter, but is that really any different than what we already have?

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#72

Post by aintgonnatakeit »

koolba wrote: post #62
theptip wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression was that Netflix came along with up-front pay packages because taking a residual-heavy deal was not attractive back when streaming was unknown. No mustache-twirling required, just a business model that made sense then and is no longer equitable. The other point is that extras are getting full-body 3D scanned for a day’s pay, licensed in perpetuity. That is an existential threat to the profession; no act…

> The other point is that extras are getting full-body 3D scanned for a day’s pay, licensed in perpetuity. Wtf? Is this really a thing?

Yes

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/19/ai-acto... https://www.axios.com/2023/07/18/hollywood-strike-sag-aftra-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/07/14/strikin...

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#73

Post by Turskarama »

bagacrap wrote: post #23
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #16

"The boom times are over. Executives know it. Wall Street knows it. And the story that we're in a revolutionary moment of technological transformation will run out of gas soon." "Wildly profitable tech companies are citing an as-yet notional recession to make deep workforce cuts. They may have another agenda."

I wouldn't have ever detected this supposed recession if I hadn't been constantly warned of it by the media

There's a two speed economy. If you're in the low speed part earning less than the median then you're already in recession. If you're in the high speed part you will be in recession when you stop being able to extract money from the low speed economy.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#74

Post by scrubs »

Reportedly the 3-stooges were ripped off by the studios who also hid or obstructed or misrepresented how much their stuff made.

But closer today ... I had a two year debate (80s/90s) on Japan conquering some 30% of the US market. The other guy argued state support and price dumping by the Japanese. I argued laziness on the part of American management who did not take quality and process control seriously. I also critiqued US auto labor unions for loosing their minds ie both of them ... since that time and since the decimation of unions since the 60s/70s today's corporate managers are virtually guaranteeing labor will return to strong unions ... stupid pay packages, bad fiscal control, and attempting to squeeze labor hard. ceos will create and legitimize them.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#75

Post by lotsofpulp »

taeric wrote: post #5

I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…

> For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable.

Netflix is earning multiple billions of dollars in profit per year already, far more than they used to with DVDs.

Also, I expect most people to prefer digital only streaming to any device they have at any time over having to deal with physical disks and single locations.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#77

Post by throwaway14356 »

The virtual people are coming, the generated scripts are coming, the generated worlds are coming, the glue code is coming. It can probably match the standard sausage. I doubt people will watch a lot of it but who knows. The market for hand made sausage will decline.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#78

Post by nitwit005 »

oldtownroad wrote: post #24
taeric wrote: post #5

I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…

Netflix used their magical tech money to compete with studios in a wildly unprofitable way. Netflix churns out hundreds of thousands of hours of content each year at heavy, heavy losses, because they can afford to burn money to force the studios to the table. If we imagine a world in which streaming platforms were only ever licensees and not producers, it’s easy to imagine the status quo could have continued indefini…

> If we imagine a world in which streaming platforms were only ever licensees and not producers, it’s easy to imagine the status quo could have continued indefinitely.

That'd have been great, but they studios decided they wouldn't license their content to them. Instead they went off to make their own streaming services, with their content exclusive to it. They effectively forced Netflix to start making content, or face an empty catalog.

There is a reason some governments previously blocked studios from owning theaters. It leads to goofy behavior.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#79

Post by tessierashpool »

lacrimacida wrote: post #14
taeric wrote: post #5

I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…

Let me put it in perspective for you: Hollywood the actors and writers are on strike because Hollywood, the money making machinery decided to replace them with a product from SV. I don’t care for Hollywood and indeed it has gotten quite garbage anyway but I do support the actors and writers striking because they can. For the rest of us it remains to be seen how we’re going to handle it or whether we boil slowly.. In…

> Hollywood the actors and writers are on strike because Hollywood, the money making machinery decided to replace them with a product from SV.

this is slightly incorrect. the WGA was talking about a strike, then the AMPTP made it clear that they wanted to reserve the right to replace people with AI, and that escalated things quite a lot. but a strike was already on the horizon before that happened.

the analysis in the original LA Times article is all about streaming, and barely touches on "AI" (ML). this is correct, in my opinion, because the role of ML in this is kind of an attention-getting red herring.

in fact the article's way better than I expected when I clicked the link. I basically endorse its reasoning top to bottom.

a little context on that endorsement: I built a decent chunk of Hulu when it launched, and I've worked for an actor whose name you'd all recognize.

I have a vaguely insider-ish perspective on this, and I would really urge you to consider the fact that Hollywood's extremely visible, but also quite opaque.

this is the most important paragraph in the article:

It’s been noted, and correctly so, that entertainment industry labor disputes often erupt when there’s a change in technology — from theaters screening projected films to the cathode ray tube of the home television, say, or the rise of YouTube and other online content in the 2000s — and that happens for a reason. Historically, executives and management use a disorienting new technology to try to justify lowering wages of their workers, and they have done so since the days of the Industrial Revolution.

they definitely want to do that with AI, but they have been doing that here in reality with streaming.

Re: Hollywood is on strike because CEOs fell for Silicon Valley’s magical thinking

#80

Post by WalterBright »

theptip wrote: post #50
taeric wrote: post #5

I support the strikes and hope it comes to a good conclusion; but this feels a touch forced, honestly. I get that it is in vogue to blame silicon valley, but hollywood has a littered history of killing their goose, as it were. For fun, consider that if netflix had stuck to the DVD model, they could still be profitable. You don't need a special license to buy a dvd and rent it out to anyone. Just as you don't need a s…

My impression was that Netflix came along with up-front pay packages because taking a residual-heavy deal was not attractive back when streaming was unknown. No mustache-twirling required, just a business model that made sense then and is no longer equitable. The other point is that extras are getting full-body 3D scanned for a day’s pay, licensed in perpetuity. That is an existential threat to the profession; no act…

If Hollywood wants to full body scan me so my likeness becomes famous forever, I'm all for it. Fly me down, give me a day pass to Disneyland, and I'm good.
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