“The company now expects to exceed $1.7 billion in free cash flow for the third quarter of 2023, in part due to the strong performance of ‘Barbie’ as well as incremental impact from strike-related factors,” the entertainment giant says in a regulatory filing.
What these articles never talk about is the demands that actors and writers are making, and how paltry that pay raise would be in comparison to these losses.
The studios are being pennywise and pound-foolish, and pissing off the most valuable part of their industry, the talent.
It’s just the people who are striking aren’t just asking for a meager raise now.
There’s also stuff about stopping AI before that Black Mirror episode about AI pumping out completed shows come true.
The studios don’t want to agree to stopping that, because they want it to happen.
Which means the strikers are right, and should be striking.
A decade or two from now, it might be AI writers, AI actors, and making a whole movie happens on a computer that just spits out a finished product.
That is something studios would be willing to take a half a billion hit against. And if they didn’t think it was coming, they would have caved by now.
The workers only have leverage if they strike before they can be replaced, and demand a future where humans are more involved than typing in a couple prompts.
I just hope AI plateaus before any of that cyberpunk shit happens.
There’s no reason to think it will.
Like, it’s going to take decades, but it’ll eventually get to the point where humans only involvement is focus grouping AI shows. Have a group of 20 people watch 20 pilots (or whole seasons) and rate them.
Winners move up in an elimination style bracket and the best get pushed out to subscribers. Or they could just say fuck it and upload everything. A single service could easily upload more than 24 hours of content a day.
The cyberpunk shit won’t really start until companies start using those shows to try to change people’s stances on shit. Instead of seeing ads to make us want to buy stuff, people will pay the streaming services to change how people think on topics. Like Big Oil paying for Fast and Furious 35 to be about how gas vehicles are still better than EVs. Or a main character having random social/political views that are constantly being mentioned.
It won’t be as obvious as characters meeting at Starbucks and saying the name 27 times. But it would work on a lot of idiots.
I still think people are vastly over-estimating how close we are to that kind of AI.
Reminds me of all the people who thought we were close to Ready Player One style VR back when VR was taking off a few years ago. And now VR stuff is clearly dying, the fad petering out with the technology only making relatively minor improvements from where it started (at least compared to what fiction portrays).
Yes, exactly this. The LLMs have done an amazing job of faking AI and it’s tricked a ton of people into believing that we’re nearly there, but we’re still a long way off from AI. Back in the 70s everyone thought AI was just around the corner as well, and while we’re much closer today, we’re still not close enough everyone should be worried about it. What everyone should be worried about though is the stupid executives buying all the snake oil and firing everyone before they realize they’ve been conned.
This isn’t a battle against AI, it’s a battle against dumb executives once again trying to figure out how to fuck their employees to make even more money for themselves.
VR stuff is not dying. You’re just in the Trough of Disillusionment of the Gartner hype cycle. Look at Steam Sales or Oculus Sales for their VR games. Look at the new headsets that continue to arrive to the market. The VR market might still be relatively small, but it’s always improving and growing.
Edit lol no counter argument, just downvotes from kids who refuse to believe they might be wrong.
VR headsets are still improving and still being sold, no disagreement there. But when I search for great VR games to play those lists look almost the same as when I got into VR several years ago. They’re still recommending only games that came out years ago and that I’ve already played. At most they might recommend a new mod to turn a regular game into VR. Where is the content? I thought I’d one day upgrade from my HTC Vive, but I don’t see the point if all I’m going to play are the games I’ve already played.
But doesn’t still work on the current level. We can but only speculate of what will happen. This is what people in 2000s must have felt about the internet.
That’s not ancient history…
Plenty of people are still alive that were using the internet 20 years ago.
I think you’re confusing what scifi predicted it would be like in movies/TV which is almost always over exaggerated because that’s what sells.
Even when that stuff came out, no one back then took the crazy stuff seriously, if anything serious predictions underestimated what it would be like today.
I don’t think you realize how crazy today’s cell phones with 5G would be to someone from 2003.
Being in my 60’s I’d have to agree with you. The range and capabilities of cell phone technology now vs 2003 is a blow-out.
Seriously, texting was a huge innovation, we couldn’t even send pics in 2003, now we’ve got fucking FaceTime and bitch if it’s not HD. Hell, we can Livestream HD to the entire Internet these days.
I think if you’ve grown up with touchscreen cellphones, you don’t understand how ground breaking they were.
We’re gonna need more than hope to cease further AI progress.
I don’t want it ceased, just controlled.
That’s completely fair. AI control is a very difficult task, but one that is worth working on.
Less than a decade, I think. We won’t live to see the first completely generated movie star. We’ll live to see them become the default. We’ll live to see a time when live human acting is, in and of itself, a noteworthy occurrence.
AI isn’t even driving this forward. Square has been ringing this bell for more than a decade with its movies. AI is just making it cheap. And that fact alone is why it will continue, unabated and unhindered, come what may.
What the studios aren’t realizing is that it’s not just the end for human actors, it’s their end as well. If you can generate feature length films with effects and acting and sound, who the hell needs a major studio?
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And how can that ever be truly ensured/compliance confirmed?
Studios can pinky swear then somehow, oops, some third party that they totally didn’t know about their practices uses the off limits material to generate AI results which are then sold to the studio.
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It’s unfortunate that these are the sticking points for the union, because they seem like really bad hills to die on long term.
Residuals are antiquated in the streaming world, gettingpaid up front is a far better deal. If you want recurring income, negotiate a stock grant. Residuals are chasing a shrinking pile of money competing with 40 years of content. Prestige TV makes headlines, but a big reason streamers aren’t releasing numbers is because those shows are crap for engagement. Shows like Friends are still likely dominating the streaming count.
AI is coming whether you like it or not, they would be far better off negotiating a way to include AI as it advances rather than seek to ban it. The fair use argument is really strong for model builders. Actors and writers are better off working with current producers to create a path forward for AI, because a complete ban is likely to result in an outside company coming in and disrupting the market. Yes the stance producers started with is extreme on this subject matter, but the actors and writers are similarly extreme.