Creative talent is Sweating on the picket lineNetflix is hard at work developing its machine learning infrastructure.
Netflix is looking to hire artificial intelligence experts, offering salaries of up to $900,000, even as it faces a fierce competition from Hollywood actors and screenwriters. Historic strike Aiming to curb industry use of AI
A job ad for a product manager for Netflix's machine learning platform lists total compensation as $300,000 to $900,000. “You'll create product experiences never before seen,” the job ad boasts.
Netflix is also hiring a Senior Software Engineer.[develop] Products that make it easy to build, manage, and extend the real world [machine learning] The company is looking for a “machine learning scientist” in charge of “application development” with an annual salary of $100,000 to $700,000, as well as a machine learning scientist in charge of “developing algorithms to achieve high-quality localization” with an annual salary of $150,000 to $750,000.
A Netflix spokesperson declined to comment on the job ads and referred CBS MoneyWatch to a statement from the Motion Picture and Television Producers Association, which represents studios (including CBS News parent company Paramount Global) in negotiations with writers and actors.
According to Netflix's website, the company relies heavily on machine learning for its success.
“We are investing heavily in machine learning to continually improve our members' experience and optimize the Netflix service end-to-end,” the company said. While the technology has been used in Netflix's recommendation algorithms in the past, the company also uses it to “help shape our catalog” and “optimize the production of original movies and TV shows at Netflix Studios, which is rapidly growing,” it said.
The company is also seeking a technical director of AI/machine learning for its games studio, which Netflix ultimately hired.[build] “Develop new types of games that would not have been possible without the continued advancements in AI/ML technology.” The annual salary for this position is $450,000-$650,000.
Generative AI and strikes
The use of so-called generative AI, the technology underlying popular apps such as ChatGPT and MidJourney, has become central to negotiations between movie studios and creators and performers.
Duncan Crabtree Ireland, chief negotiator for SAG-AFTRA, which represents actors, called the technology “an existential threat to the acting profession.” The union said studios are proposing that “background actors should be scanned, paid a day's pay, and the companies should own those scans and their likenesses in perpetuity, without compensation.” Crabtree Ireland.
The AMPTP, a trade group that represents the studios, disputed that explanation, telling CBS MoneyWatch that the studios' proposal only allowed replicas of background actors to be used “in the film in which that background actor appears,” and that other uses were up to negotiation.
Authors fear that AI will be used to reduce their pay and take away ownership of their work.
“The immediate concern with AI isn't that our work as writers will be replaced by artificially generated content, but that we'll be underpaid to rewrite that garbage into something that could have been done better in the first place,” screenwriter C. Robert Cargill said on Twitter. “This is what the WGA is against, and what the studios want.”
Many media outlets are already using AI. Write an articleThe results are often riddled with errors. Disney has also advertised for generative AI roles, according to The Intercept, which first reported the job listing. And some video game studios are using AI to write characters for their games.
