The past four years of Hollywood have been a wake-up call for an industry that had been booming with creative ambition for the past decade. The COVID-19 pandemic caused production costs to rise, cinema attendance to fall, and finally the bubble to burst. Straited writers and actors went on strike last year, and studios drastically cut spending. The entry of streaming into the film and TV economy inexorably changed how all parties make money. A deal was eventually reached that focused on safeguards surrounding AI.
In a lengthy interview with The New York Times, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos likened the company's adjustments to working with AI to how the world-famous streaming service pivoted from DVD rentals. “Whenever there's rapid change in any industry, traditional companies are usually challenged to defend their legacy business,” he said. “When we started shipping DVDs by mail 25 years ago, we got into a business at a time of transition. We knew physical media wasn't the future.”
While carefully avoiding the “chicken and egg” debate about Netflix's impact on physical media, Sarandos said that sometimes you have to kill off your favorites.
“We didn't have any time to try to protect our DVD business,” he says. “As that started to decline, we started to invest more in streaming because we knew that's where the pack was headed. At one point, we made a conscious decision to stop inviting DVD people to company meetings because the DVD business was making up so much of the profit and revenue of the business. We were that critical about where the business was going.”
When it comes to AI, Sarandos seems to be taking a slightly softer approach, but remains as committed to the transition as he was back then.
“Either way, I think AI is a natural progression of what's going on in the creative world today,” he said. “Volume staging hasn't replaced location shooting. Writers, directors and editors will use AI as a tool to help them do their jobs better, more efficiently and effectively.”
When asked if AI would eventually replace human creators, Sarandos responded: “I have a lot more faith in humans, I really do. I don't think an AI program will be able to write better scripts than a good screenwriter or replace good acting, or you won't know the difference. AI isn't going to take your job. Someone who uses AI well may take your job.”
