Introduction
Let’s be honest. The release of SORA is going to destroy much of the entertainment industry. A skeleton crew is going to be able to generate more and (in some eyes) better content than massive studios, armies of writers and flocks of celebrities. In today’s Deep Think, I explore the pros and cons with a twist that, in the end, no one can escape.
Industry Reinvention + Evolution
The benefactors of this AI disruption will, hands down, be creators/creatives. For the firs time, those with ideas will have zero barriers between their vision and bringing it to life at whatever scale and in whatever format they desire. There will be an absolute explosion of content (as if there’s not enough already).
Content will be filtered as the creators build their personal brands with which viewers connect. Similar to record labels like Blue Note, Discord and Death Row the film and television industry will be driven by brands like Blumhouse and Monkeypaw that define themselves by genre, story and characters. Further, openings appear for new entrants like Mr. Beast et al that will surely become serious players in this new world. This will represent a significant evolution of the market as influencer, brand and business collide at multiple touch points and at massive scale.
Once this happens, streaming services will be free of costly production overhead and will begin jockeying for position like A&R folks hoping to lock down the next big act that keeps people subscribing to their service.
Film + Television Become Devalued
Film and television will become disposable in the same way music has become disposable. None of us have ever listened to more music which is great, but neither have we known so little about the music we’re consuming. The creators have become invisible to us behind an endless playlist curated tirelessly by AI. Actors, movies and shows will have huge reach quickly and burn out just as quickly. The one-hit-wonder will appear as an AI actor that dominated the conversation for a summer then fell into obscurity like Rebecca Black and Friday.
As brands evolve and build massive audiences and distributors (i.e. streaming services) become massive marketing machines everything will begin its natural shift into more immersive viewing environments driven by hardware like Oculus and Vision and software like Fortnight and Sandbox. Call it whatever you want just don’t say Metaverse 👀🤦♂️
Entertainment + Media Industry Decimation
Here’s an off-the-cuff list of teams that will be eliminated or reduced by 75% or more:
Set Designers
Lighting Teams
Costume Designers
Script writers
Craft services
Ad Agencies
Copy writers
Animators
Editors
Marketing departments
Development teams
Accounting Departments
Legal Departments
And so on
So, you’re talking about eliminating much of the workforce that powers an industry valued at almost $3 trillion.
WTF Is Next? Here’s The Twist
There is no world where the destruction of these jobs is equaled by the creation of new ones. Further, this disruption is going to occur in every single industry. Media and entertainment happen to be the first ones for obvious reasons, but this is coming to the legal profession, the medical profession, mental health, education, construction and every industry you can imagine. It’s only a matter of time.
Very soon, the incentive to pursue higher education to become a professional will not exist because there simply won’t be a return on the investment. It is my opinion that vocational training is going to become the path to obtain skills that are directly related to this new world and have application that today’s degrees simply aren’t positioned to serve.
The cruel irony is that we will have sooooo many options and the prices should come way down but, here’s the twist.
Who the heck is gonna pay for all this stuff when a significant portion of the population has no job and no income? Not even universal basic income would be enough to shore up the delta nor is our capitalist system setup to support such an effort.
Conclusion
I sure as heck don’t know the answer to what is going to happen. I will say, I am anxious about what the future holds. The tongue-in-cheek title of this blog is not feeling as cute as it once did. What I can say is it is more important than ever to be leaning into the advancements in AI so you are prepared in whatever way you can be to evolve with these rapid changes.
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