The fear that AI will replace top artists is misplaced. The correct framing is what happens when top talent gets AI tools. A director like Steven Spielberg could potentially increase their output 20-fold for a fraction of the cost, leading to a massive increase in high-quality creative work.
AI won't replace designers because it lacks taste and subjective opinion. Instead, as AI gets better at generating highly opinionated (though not perfect) designs, it will serve as a powerful exploration tool. This plants more flags in the option space, allowing human designers to react, curate, and push the most promising directions further, amplifying their strategic role.
Don't view generative AI video as just a way to make traditional films more efficiently. Ben Horowitz sees it as a fundamentally new creative medium, much like movies were to theater. It enables entirely new forms of storytelling by making visuals that once required massive budgets accessible to anyone.
While generative video gets the hype, producer Tim McLear finds AI's most practical use is automating tedious post-production tasks like data management and metadata logging. This frees up researchers and editors to focus on higher-value creative work, like finding more archival material, rather than being bogged down by manual data entry.
Don't view AI through a cost-cutting lens. If AI makes a single software developer 10x more productive—generating $5M in value instead of $500k—the rational business decision is to hire more developers to scale that value creation, not fewer.
ElevenLabs' CEO predicts AI won't enable a single prompt-to-movie process soon. Instead, it will create a collaborative "middle-to-middle" workflow, where AI assists with specific stages like drafting scripts or generating voice options, which humans then refine in an iterative loop.
Social media allows anyone to be a "reality TV star," but creating high-production fiction requires immense capital. As AI tools democratize filmmaking, countless talented storytellers who prefer working behind the scenes—the Christopher Nolans of the world—can finally produce their visions.
The OpenAI team believes generative video won't just create traditional feature films more easily. It will give rise to entirely new mediums and creator classes, much like the film camera created cinema, a medium distinct from the recorded stage plays it was first used for.
The tendency for AI models to "make things up," often criticized as hallucination, is functionally the same as creativity. This trait makes computers valuable partners for the first time in domains like art, brainstorming, and entertainment, which were previously inaccessible to hyper-literal machines.
AI will commoditize the *act* of creating content (the 'doing'). The value will shift entirely to the *idea* behind the content (the 'thinking'), making strategic creativity the most valuable skill.
The most tangible fear of AI in Hollywood isn't replacing A-list actors, who have leverage for consent and compensation. The immediate threat is to production jobs—grips, makeup—as AI enables digital reshoots and effects, reducing the need for on-set labor.