Hollywood has no idea what to do about artificial intelligence

This is an excerpt from Sources by Alex Heatha newsletter about artificial intelligence and the technology industry, is only distributed to The Verge subscribers once a week.

This week I took a closer look at how different Silicon Valley and Hollywood are on what to do about artificial intelligence.

First, at OpenAI DevDay, Sam Altman presented the new Sora app as a gift to creators. He suggested that OpenAI should be there if anything Very critical By not allowing people to create more types of AI-powered videos.

“By and large, creators, rights holders and people are very excited about the potential of this,” Altman said during a media Q&A in San Francisco on Monday that I attended. “They think it will deepen the connection. It’s kind of like a new generation of fanfiction.”

The next day, I arrived BloombergScreentime happened in Los Angeles to hear how media executives, agents and studio heads feel about the AI ​​meteor heading towards them. Sora had just reached 1 million downloads in the App Store and was at the top of everyone’s minds. Overall, I came away with the impression that Hollywood leaders still have no idea what to do about the risks posed by AI, and will be defeated by technology that moves faster than they can understand.

I’ve lost count of the number of times a version of “We care about copyright” has been invoked on Screentime like a prayer. Meanwhile, no one at the event wanted to specifically address the fact that OpenAI Clearly trained on their intellectual property Without permission the product was unleashed, at least initially, He had no shame in making that clear. The fact that Hollywood leaders are unable to share a public view on this issue, or more importantly, what they intend to do about it, should be troubling to everyone who works in this field.

While on stage, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters completely dodged a question BloombergLucas Shaw on Sora specifically, instead talking about the more boring ways in which AI is used in almost every part of the production process. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison also chose to promote the less controversial, tool-like aspect of AI, describing it as a “new pencil” with which to create. The only CEO I’ve heard comes close to addressing the real issue on everyone’s mind is Warner Music CEO (and former YouTube CEO) Robert Kinkel, who has made it clear that Warner content must be licensed to train on, and that there will be repercussions for those who don’t follow the rules.

It is not surprising that the music industry has a stronger perspective than, for example, the music industry Hemming and hawing About the AI ​​that major talent agencies are currently doing. Brands are better positioned to take on AI companies as a unified group of players who have navigated a version of this problem before with the advent of music streaming. Kyncl went so far as to predict that AI will benefit the music industry in the long term, similar to how YouTube eventually solved the copyright problem and evolved into a major distribution platform for the entertainment industry.

He may be right About music specificallyBut a lack of teamwork from the rest of Hollywood means that AI companies are willing to continue asking for forgiveness rather than permission. OpenAI’s decision to train Sora this way was a deliberate choice, not a coincidence, and showed a complete lack of consideration for the implications of absorbing everyone’s content to feed its own AI. Altman is simply following the same playbook used by the tech industry in the past To achieve dominance, who can blame him this time?