Hollywood AI

Hollywood, the McDonalds of the postmodernist cultural hamburger

As I was finishing my previous post, I was struggling with the fact that I was not able to place one of the best examples into “the good, the bad and the ugly” framework I was trying to create.  The reason: it fits into all three, so I decided to write this short rejoinder to explain.

Hollywood is running out of ideas in a very prolific way; making sequels to prequels of spin-offs based on remakes. It relies increasingly on true and tried clichés.
To some extent, this is understandable, they have to respond to the increased demand. In the old days, as I was growing up, if I saw one truly good movie in a year, it was a good year for me. But then, the market was different. Today, my wife is upset, if I cannot find a good movie to watch every day. OK, at least once a week. First came cable and video rental, then time-shifting with on-demand and eventually, streaming platforms and Youtube.
The increase in demand was exponential to the point of total saturation. Today we are at a point where I have friends who are cancelling their streaming services because they cannot find anything worthwhile to watch. Of course, I am exaggerating a little, but I am sure you get my drift.

There are only so many ideas and so many ways to express them. Like any addiction, our addiction to entertainment eventually leads to an unpleasant numbness.

Then enters AI, with its limitless ability to reshuffle the creative card-deck. To find the cliché that we are the most likely to respond to. Now, is this good or bad?

AI can seriously decrease the cost of creating an ever-greater pile of garbage. On the other hand, it opens the door for a much greater competition from alternative creators.
I don’t feel sorry for unionized writers as they are churning out ever less creative cultural hamburgers, but I also understand that AI can only make things worse. Cheaper, in every sense of the word.

AI already plays a big role in Hollywood with CGI, but mostly in the sense of narrow AI. At this point, it still relies heavily on ‘manual’ labour, but it quickly approaches the point where it will only need text prompts like LLMs. Now, is this good or bad?

The CGI people don’t like it, the writers don’t like it, but the studios consider them economically inevitable. You cannot argue with the $$$.
This is the ugly reality of disruptive technologies.

When I say ugly, I mean the underlying rut, the woke new world of Hollywood.
A world with ever-increasing political bias and social engineering. A world of fantasy, where the new stereotype is its most unlikely opposite in reality. A word where five feet, hundred lbs women can easily demolish athletic men twice their size; where the British aristocracy is 50% black and any group of people have at least 30% representation of the sexual deviance alphabet.  

One could argue that credibility is the biggest problem of Hollywood, but we could also point out that a politically manipulated AI (which is what LLMs are) can only make it worse.

Now, is this bad or worse?

Further reading (related posts from me)

• Artificial Intelligence vs. Programmed Stupidity

• AI is no match for natural stupidity
  You can find a long list of references at the end this post

• The anatomy of fear porn utopias

• AI-23 - part #1 an exploratory surgery

• AI-23 - part#2 epistemology

• AI-23 - part #3 promises and dangers

Worthwhile reading (more from Others)

• How can Visualisation Companies Overcome the Threat of AI (dodigitalagency.com)

• Filmmaking 101: What is CGI in Movies and Animation? | Boords

• How SAG-AFTRA strike will create global havoc for Hollywood - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

• SAG actors', writers' strikes bring revolution to Hollywood - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)