Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other generative AI bot to create a story; the output will always amaze you. You will get a compelling storyline with the most detailed descriptions of scenes and characters. When you’re doing this for fun, this might sound like a dream. But for professionals in the creative industries, this seems more like a nightmare.
Strike upon strike
The tension between generative AI and creative professionals hit the world when actors and writers announced major strikes in Hollywood. One of the prominent reasons was that generative AI might replace their careers in the upcoming (near) future. According to the BBC[1], creative professionals advocated for better pay, working conditions, and job security in the age of generative AI. The strikes performed by over 160.000 creative professionals caused delays for many movie projects and caused major monetary damage. Framestore, the company behind the special effects in Marvel movies, saw a decrease of 46.7 million[2] US dollars in its revenue.
Discussion
In my opinion, the strength of generative AI and the strength of creative professionals need to be combined into a collaborative relationship. At this point, AI will inevitably replace some job roles, whether it’s in the creative industry or not. Thus, it is important to work together and to combine the strengths of both sides. For actors, I believe that the reassurance against the use of AI is justified. Their faces or voices should not be used without their consent for movies created with AI. A more controversial opinion from my side might be that writers need to adapt to the current circumstances. It is not completely new that jobs are replaced by new technologies. Think of factory workers in car assembly lines being replaced by robots. As emphasized earlier, a collaborative relationship is needed to both foster the talents of writers and the strength of generative AI. New job types and roles could come into existence which would optimise the output of creative companies when humans and computers collaborate.
What do you think? What is your opinion on the use of generative AI in the creative industries? Should it be halted or should it be enabled?
[1] SAG strike live updates: Actors join writers as Hollywood shuts down – BBC News
[2] Marvel VFX Giant Reveals Damage Done By Hollywood Strikes (forbes.com)
I am really interested in this topic, and thus thank the author for writing a blog on this issue. Unfortunately, I disagree with something said here, and hopefully this discussion results in a better understanding of the issue here. The author understands that using the likeness (visual and audio) of actors without their consent is not appropriate, but does not assign the same value to the words and works written by writers. This is especially common in the art industry, as replacing scripts with research papers and source code of apps will probaly change the how lightly we take the issue of ownership. I believe using anyones likeness for my own gain, without fair compensation is not right, but the same goes for the work that writers have spent many lifetimes developing. One of the major points of contention during the strikes were the fact that studioes wanted to be able to use the scripts written by writers to train their AI models, without compensating the authors. This is bigger than an issue of writers not wanting to us generative AI to help them write scripts, but more an issue of their work being stolen to train these models, which will eventually be used to replace the original authors themselves. Keeping up with the author’s analogy, the factories that were used to build cars were not financed by robbing the same factory workers in the middle of the night. And lastly, the output by AI is not objectively comparable to good writing, even ignoring the fact the a story has more to do with just the words written. It is about sharing the experiences being expressed by authors, and whether or not people will feel equally excited sharing a story with a robot is not yet clear.
I am a big fan of the cinema myself, so reading this article made me very curious. Even though I have watched coultless AI videos using the face and the voice of movie stars in order to create completely different storylines, I never thought of this being such an important issue. They are public faces after all. However, I strongly agree with you, that at the end of the day their rights are being violated. Besides the fact that their performances are the job that gets them paid, they contribute personally to the movies exposing themselves. Regarding the writers’ work, I understand totally that technological achievements are capable of shifting the way a society functions, but we are obliged to protect art anyway possible. Building a healthy AI-human relationship could in fact turn out very helpful for writers since it could provide an easier way to organize ideas, enhancing productivity. However, writers can’t be compared with factory workers. Art is what makes us human and we should not let its creativity completely at the hands of algorithms.