Family Ties costar and Hollywood veteran Justine Bateman has a few thoughts about Artificial Intelligence and its potential uses in Hollywood.
The 80s star made her comments about the ongoing Writer’s Guild of America strike, which has shut down multiple productions, live shows, awards ceremonies, and caused the industry to come to a standstill. AI regulation is on their list of issues.
Many believe the studios have refused to budge because they want to shed writers and programming in order to get lean. Many studios and streaming services have been absorbing massive losses, and a return to cheaply made reality and game show formats may be all that saves some in the industry.
In her interview, Bateman told Fox News Digital, via The Daily Wire: “I think AI has no place in Hollywood at all,” “To me, tech should solve problems that humans have. Using ChatGPT or any … software that’s using AI to write screenplays, using that in place of a writer is not solving a problem. We don’t have a lack of writers. We don’t have a lack of actors. We don’t have a lack of directors. We don’t have a lack of talented people.”
Indeed, what the industry has, besides a lack of new ideas, is a lack of revenue and subscribers. Netflix, Hulu, Peacock and the like have been bleeding cash, while small upstarts like Philo, Tubi, and even Roku are thriving.
If studios were to utilize AI to create scripts, it would decimate the royalty aspect for writers, and put more cash back into the studios pockets.
Bateman continued: “The use of AI makes me sad because I feel like it’s … getting away from being human,” Bateman told the outlet. “But we’ve been doing a lot of that, right? Plastic surgery. Filters. Doing things over Zoom instead of in person. But the idea that somebody would use AI to replace human expression, I think, is the saddest thing to me.”
AI is already being used experimentally. The Joe Rogan podcast features a separate podcast of nothing but Joe Rogan AI. While there is still a discernible difference between the two, how long before that aspect of AI is made to be seamless?
In terms of motivation for studios to use AI, Bateman seems to know what’s up:
“Incredible amounts of money are made off of our work,” she said. “Incredible profits are made off of our work. But what if you could make even greater profit? What if you could get rid of the pesky overhead of paying for the directors and the actors and the writers and the locations, the production, the post-production? What if you just get rid of all of that? Can you imagine how much larger your profit could be? That’s the road we’re going down,” she said.
She continued, saying, “The entertainment business is not going to do it better. It’s just going to do it faster, less expensively, and you will have a greater volume of it. You’ll have more content. And, like, even referring to films and series as content to begin with, I think is … insulting.”
Hollywood has a problem. To be accurate, they have many problems. Stale, woke storylines, a lack of any real star power, too much competition from upstarts, and big name actors seeking to take their game out of California.
Something had to give with the streaming industry, and if the studios have their way, it will be jobs in favor of profits, and the use of AI instead of humans.
Featured image screen shot from embedded YouTube video
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