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I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

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Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#21

Post by doitLP »

spwa4 wrote: post #15
amazingamazing wrote: post #9

It is interesting to see how all of these folks are out of main work and doing gig work instead, with productions being moved to Canada and other places abroad. I wonder why. All of the strikes?

The writer's guild and other striking organizations put it to: 1) general decline in wages 2) only short-term work being available 3) streaming platforms never pay the way Hollywood/Broadcast TV did: bad pay, but with a share of show profits for decades afterwards. Now just bad pay So it was generally about getting their pay increased. Instead, the strike lead to a big decrease in pay that Netflix and Skydance (Param…

Not just writers…there’s unions for every piece of the pie and they all have members and pensions and have to justify their existence.

There’s the ever-increasing restrictions and cost of shooting in California and the huge incentives other localities offer to film and even commercial (advert) projects. My friend just flew the whole production to Louisiana to shoot a 30 second commercial because of the incentives.

There’s the fact that even if a new show or movie is good, it is competing not only with other new stuff but also with the entire back catalogue of everything ever made that is instantly available for viewers.

There’s streaming rights, that never paid as much as traditional TV even though it had broader reach.

There’s competition with phone / social platforms that continue to optimize their content and algorithms with shorter feedback loops and more additive content, against trad production which takes a ton of money and time and upfront cost.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#22

Post by vrganj »

amazingamazing wrote: post #9

It is interesting to see how all of these folks are out of main work and doing gig work instead, with productions being moved to Canada and other places abroad. I wonder why. All of the strikes?

The very AI they have been reduced to training.

What a wonderful dystopia we're building.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#23

Post by glimshe »

orsorna wrote: post #20

> I too needed cash to pay rent, to buy food, to pay Maggie—the human still charging me a flat rate of 150 bucks I really found it hard to sympathize with the author at this point. If you're in a crunch you don't need to pay a maid to clean.

"first world problems", as people say. And the tone also felt dismissive of the work done by the cleaner... If it's such a big amount, he could consider entering her line of business.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#24

Post by sligbad »

orsorna wrote: post #20

> I too needed cash to pay rent, to buy food, to pay Maggie—the human still charging me a flat rate of 150 bucks I really found it hard to sympathize with the author at this point. If you're in a crunch you don't need to pay a maid to clean.

If this is your takeaway, it's what you were looking to believe anyway...

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#25

Post by LogicFailsMe »

So... Hollywood... They were an oligarchy of billionaires living off minions living paycheck to paycheck before it was cool... Below the line talent always gets shafted there. And it would all collapse without the minimum viable safety net of the guilds...

Musicians seem to be embracing AI as a platform given that's another oligarchy itself. Where's the Robert Rodriguez of AI film-making? We haven't even seen the Ed Wood here yet.

Edit: and here we go with the enablers of the overlord status quo again. I'd love to know why people think Hollywood's effective caste system is worth preserving. You don't like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel? Cool, the smarter Harvey Weinsteins of Hollywood are much worse and they're the ones that didn't get caught to this day.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#26

Post by [deleted] »

vrganj wrote: post #22
amazingamazing wrote: post #9

It is interesting to see how all of these folks are out of main work and doing gig work instead, with productions being moved to Canada and other places abroad. I wonder why. All of the strikes?

The very AI they have been reduced to training. What a wonderful dystopia we're building.

[deleted]

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#27

Post by Aurornis »

I read the article. It was about 1 person trying to do AI training data set annotation and review gigs.

The only supporting evidence for the title’s claim about “everyone” is that they found the gig work from a comment on a Facebook group for writers who were looking for side gigs. Other than that, this is entirely 1 person’s experience.

I also started to lose sympathy for the writer when they bounced between claiming they were broke and talking about about their $150 house cleaner, or the long rant about not being invited to a Slack channel she needed for the work then later realizing they were in the channel from the start and just missed the required onboarding. There’s a section where we’re supposed to hate a coworker whose only offense is trying to do the job well.

Doesn’t sound like a great job, but the article was trying so hard to show this as an “everyone in Hollywood” instead of admitting it was one person’s bumbling misadventure.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#28

Post by mantas »

voidpointer wrote: post #11
herpdyderp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, however, do look forward to a time when we can prompt our own TV shows. That second season that ruined your favorite show? Fix it. The second season that never happened? Create it. Of course AI needs to get better still for that to be bearable for many of us, but I'm still excited at the idea!

Isn't the scenario you are describing the ultimate collapse of art and culture as we know it? If everyone sits at home and creates the content that they want, what do we talk about? How do we engage in shared culture if there is nothing to experience together?

Welcome to the life of fringe subcultures. Of course subcultures, even most fringe ones, still have some community. But even in generated content world, some people would end up with similar taste and that generated content being similar. They may even share that content and watch some of each other's content! And oh boy the joy of meeting that rare human who has similar taste! E.g. knowing some fringe band that created a demo tape 2 decades ago that you found in some strange torrent tracker.

But yes, mass/pop culture as we know it would be dead. And IMO the world would be better off.

I agree with other comments that may lead to people staying inside their comfort zone. But I think it's question of time when good portion of people would start sharing that content with other people. Expanding each others' imagination. And few that don't... Well, existing pop culture is not exactly good at expanding mind as well. And such decentralized content creation may be less prone to propaganda and other social control efforts.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#29

Post by throwforfeds »

torben-friis wrote: post #18
mkzet wrote: post #3

I've stopped watching movies and shows since CGI is so obviously worse than it was 10-15 years ago. In the moment you notice AI slop everywhere and the void of any human touch, it's impossible to enjoy it anymore. I'm not going to talk about the fact that half of the actors have hideous aesthetic interventions, wigs, makeup, and so on. Now it's normal for me to watch something again that came out before 2010.

I mostly skip triple A hollywood movies, but the bulk of movies being made nowadays don't make use of any of that, mostly because it makes no sense in their genres. Many european countries are constantly releasing movies with low budget but far better in terms of character work, plot, etc. Asia is killing it as well, with south korea having golden era hollywood quality, Japan being consistently decent and China start…

American productions constantly feel like they think their audience are idiots these days. It's nice to watch a European production where they don't assume their viewers are going to also be doom-scrolling and feel the need to summarize what's going on by having a character say the summary out loud every episode.

Re: I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI

#30

Post by NickC25 »

mkzet wrote: post #3

I've stopped watching movies and shows since CGI is so obviously worse than it was 10-15 years ago. In the moment you notice AI slop everywhere and the void of any human touch, it's impossible to enjoy it anymore. I'm not going to talk about the fact that half of the actors have hideous aesthetic interventions, wigs, makeup, and so on. Now it's normal for me to watch something again that came out before 2010.

You can stop watching big budget productions, but you shouldn't skip out on your local independent cinema scene. If you're in or around a large metro area, there will be local(ish) folks out there making interesting stuff. Might not be super fancy CGI or incredible sound design, but it will be humans telling human stories, which is the heart of cinema.
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