The Five Most Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
The Ever-Changing Media Landscape Adapts to Its Latest Change
If one were to take a glancing god’s-eye-view of the history of industrialization thus far, one of the readily apparent themes is that of the developing technology that reaches a point in its development where it becomes apparent to pretty much everybody that it will cleave in the pages of economic history a before-and-after demarcation.
A.I. is one such technology. To be more specific, generative A.I. is upending the careers of “creatives” across the world. And perhaps nowhere is feeling that so precisely as the dream-factory workers of Hollywood.
Though the Writers’ Guild Association (WGA) managed to get a pretty fair deal with respect to the intrusion of A.I. on the work of writers, other Hollywood workers are not so lucky.
Aspects of The A.I.-Fueled Future of Video Production
In the industrial history mentioned above, we can conceive of certain periods of history as lines dividing the “before” state of the job market and its many nuances (e.g., what college degrees and career paths are most likely to pay off, in a strictly financial sense at least) at one point in history, and the next point’s “after” state.
The point with the “next” qualifier earns that qualifier from it coinciding with the moment the technology finally began to change once-dependable (even if not particularly lucrative) lines of work, maybe to the point of outright displacing humans from roles in that line of work.
In Hollywood, we are seeing a dividing line form from generative A.I. that can effectively eliminate much of the sweat equity that goes into making movies, which has traditionally been known to be quite resource-consuming.
So, what has generative A.I. gotten so good at that it is finally beginning a transition in the entertainment industry, which may make the most financially high-stakes video productions in the world?
Outsourcing Video Productions to Technology
To better answer the question that the last section concluded with, it would perhaps be best to first amend the question to, “What hasn’t A.I. gotten so good at [….]?”
Among these things are:
- Editing (audio and video)
- Digital effects
- Writing
- Animating
- Storyboarding
- You name it
It turns out, a lot, which is why unions in Hollywood are now making serious negotiations and stipulations–along with some serious concessions–regarding A.I. a part of their contracts with studios.
Animators in particular have quite a bit to worry about, as previews of OpenAI’s Sora indicate a high proficiency of A.I. to create studio-quality animated content.
A Call to Adaptation
As it is in Hollywood, so it will be in other industries. Jobs that people would spend their lives pursuing, developing skills directly or even exclusively relevant to, will suddenly become the purview of a technology.
And so you may see people–and you may be among them–deep into a career that in hindsight they seemed to take for granted, displaced from their roles with decades of skills and experience that may be of little relevance in a job market in an economy that is becoming increasingly reliant on technology that possesses that skillset and experience.
Arguably, we are right now transitioning into that “next” point in history, where many of us are seeing A.I. become a part of our jobs, perhaps in unwelcome or unnerving ways.
The solution for many workers facing this inevitability is to find out how to adapt to changing circumstances. If there’s heretofore been no back-up plan, there is no time like the present to consider exit strategies from an industry that may displace you sooner than you’d expect.
But there are other businesses where this inclusion of A.I. does not so much intrude on anyone’s job so much as make possible actions that, for the business, were not achievable beforehand.
The Benefit for Small-Business Owners
There is a lot of money in Hollywood already, and humanity’s appetite for entertainment is only growing, so there is certainly enough capital to continue producing filmed entertainment.
However, for small businesses all over the world, video production may not even be an option because of budgetary constraints.
This, then, could mean that small businesses suddenly have access to a technology that allows them to create, for instance, video marketing content that makes the business more competitive in its field.
So, though video-production workers will likely be seeing their roles reduced or even replaced by technology, small-business owners may see their businesses grow by having access to technology that at one point you needed production teams to work on.
