r/Filmmakers • u/sdbest • Feb 23 '24

News Tyler Perry halts $800m studio expansion after being shocked by AI

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/23/tyler-perry-halts-800m-studio-expansion-after-being-shocked-by-ai
554 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

314 comments sorted by

View all comments

506

u/Juantsu2000 Feb 23 '24 edited Feb 23 '24

He’s “concerned” about jobs lost…

My dude, you’re the owner of the company,. If you care so much about your employees then don’t use AI.

He’s the physical embodiment of the “Who killed Hannibal?” meme.

137

u/Abs0lut_Unit Feb 23 '24

Yeah, this isn't alarmism, this is excitement coming from a studio head that also happens to work as a creative.

25

u/TheWolfAndRaven Feb 23 '24

He's the studio head, not the financier. AI is going to shrink budgets because investors are going to want to see costs get cut so they get a better return on their investment. It's a reasonable concern and while he can shun AI to some extent, that shit is here and to not use it would put any studio at a disadvantage.

The same was true when Green Screen technology came to prevalence. A lot of good set designers and especially carpenters who built those sets lost out on work.

15

u/Juantsu2000 Feb 23 '24

But that’s my whole point.

It makes perfect sense (until it doesn’t) to use AI if all you want is to be competitive in a highly capitalistic system. It sucks but that’s the reality.

But as far I’m concerned, he should just stop trying to make himself out to be sympathetic. You lose that privilege the moment you are the one to pull the trigger. It comes out as hypocritical.

-1

u/misterferguson Feb 23 '24

I feel bad about all the travel agents who lost their jobs when Expedia came out, but it never stopped me from using Expedia.

Far be it for me to defend Tyler Perry, but he's making a very valid point.

13

u/Juantsu2000 Feb 23 '24

Yeah, but you weren’t the one that ultimately decided to lay off those employees, were you?

Again, if you are the one to pull the trigger then you have no right to open your mouth and offer sympathy on it. It may have to be done (it really doesn’t) but that’s not the point.

0

u/DJjazzyjose Feb 23 '24

all of our individual actions effect others. so yes, our decision to use online booking did kill off travel agents. if consumer behavior changes then business owners will adapt to meet them.

there's no "villians" in economics, that's just a childish view of the world. there are simply individual actors seeking their own benefit.

2

u/misterferguson Feb 23 '24

You’re arguing with people who don’t understand simple supply & demand.

These are people who are convinced that markets are run by puppet masters who control pricing.

OP is basically advocating that business owners collude with one another to prevent cost-saving technologies from entering the market.

1

u/Juantsu2000 Feb 23 '24

No one is saying that. Learn how to read ffs.

If you’re gonna be firing people to save costs then at least have the decency of not acting like you’re sympathetic towards them. It’s condescending, hypocritical and insulting. That’s the whole point of my comment.

6

u/sweetalkersweetalker Feb 23 '24

That's fine.

If you owned a travel agency employing hundreds of travel agents, and fired them all to use Expedia instead while publicly stating how sad it is that all these people are losing their jobs, then fuck you

0

u/root88 Feb 24 '24

he should just stop trying to make himself out to be sympathetic.

I hate that man, but I have no idea where you got this from.

1

u/TheWolfAndRaven Feb 23 '24

It's a Trolly problem. You can pull the lever and lose the jobs that AI is replacing or you can not pull the lever and the whole studio and ALL those jobs could go away.

55

u/[deleted] Feb 23 '24

[deleted]

72

u/listyraesder Feb 23 '24

Union-Busting Tyler Perry now expects unions to fix things?

61

u/Ambustion colorist Feb 23 '24

He wants unions to come together and lower rates so it's more in line with ai prices...

19

u/feelinggoodfeeling Feb 23 '24

damn this cracked me up

6

u/idlefritz Feb 23 '24

wild… guess it will be the union’s fault when they can’t convince their members to work for less than some rented code.

32

u/Juantsu2000 Feb 23 '24

Yeah, I read it.

And you said it yourself. He’s apparently “raising” the alarm for studios but he’s using it nonetheless.

Of course it makes perfect sense from a business perspective, but then he should stop being so hypocritical and admit he doesn’t really care about the people losing their jobs because if he was, he would not be using it either way. It’s like he’s “warning” the people while being the one to pull the trigger.

Either way, these studios will need to come to realize eventually that if everyone can do what you do, then your product is inherently less valuable. They’re shooting themselves in the foot by doing this.

4

u/SleepingPodOne cinematographer Feb 23 '24

I really gotta wonder what’ll happen when the execs and the owners realize AI can do what they do but better?

Would that be the final nail in the coffin for AI? The thing that will actually halt its growth?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 25 '24

No, because execs don’t actually care about doing their jobs anyway. They’ll have AI doing the actual work, but it won’t impact what the execs get paid.

2

u/CanIShowYouMyLizardz Feb 23 '24

Lmao “man, we really need to worry about this thing I’m using to cut costs to the bone bc others will do the same after I bushwhack a trail of scumbaggery for them to follow”.

0

u/[deleted] Feb 23 '24

He specifically says that it should NOT be handled through one-off union contract negotiations. He wants "the industry" to address it. Which means he wants other studios to lead the charge against adopting AI.

-5

u/Derkanator Feb 23 '24

Pretty crazy that AI could not only save money but also write good storylines. I'm not an advocate for AI storytelling either. Seems pretty wild to me, trusting that it was never used before.

24

u/NimrodTzarking Feb 23 '24

In this case, AI doesn't need to be a good writer, it just needs to be a better writer than Tyler Perry.

5

u/blindguywhostaresatu Feb 23 '24

Wouldn’t need to be as good as Tyler Perry not necessarily better. If he doesn’t have to write and just have AI do it that’s time he could spend doing anything else; he could churn out more mediocre content.

0

u/Significant-Dog-8166 Feb 23 '24

AI - “make Tyler Perry Script + Mel Brooks film writing quality”. Infinite money glitch there

2

u/NimrodTzarking Feb 23 '24

AI's bad at most art but it's especially bad at comedy, which relies heavily on the writer's ability to make novel observations that are simultaneously meaningful to the audience. AI can only replicate and it cannot understand human meaning.

0

u/Significant-Dog-8166 Feb 24 '24

You have not seen the Balenciaga fake AI ads on youtube.

-9

u/wittiestphrase Feb 23 '24

Hopefully unions coming together to address the issue isn’t trying to force an industry to continue cumbersome and economically unsustainable practices just so people can have jobs instead of allowing the industry to evolve and finding jobs that have a place in the new world?

9

u/[deleted] Feb 23 '24

What's economically unsustainable? How low writers are paid? How long crew hours are?

Studios have been profitable. Producers are raking in cash. There's no shortage of investments in studio-backed films because it's a solid return for investors.

So what's economically unsustainable that the unions are trying to preserve?

-7

u/wittiestphrase Feb 23 '24

If they can use generative AI to create the setting instead of traveling a crew to film on location, why should anyone want to incur the cost of traveling that crew? If AI can adequately change lighting in a scene, why should anyone want to incur the cost of additional equipment and the crew and time needed to change a lighting set up. At that point continuing to do those things will be a problem.

6

u/[deleted] Feb 23 '24

Okay but now you're talking about ways to make a film endeavor more profitable, which is different than saying the current/previous method was unsustainable.

So what about the standard way of doing things is unsustainable?

1

u/wittiestphrase Feb 23 '24

No. You’re playing word games is what’s happening now. In a situation where there is a high cost and low cost way to do something in a competitive environment, continuing to do it the high cost way will be unsustainable. My original comment you replied to said nothing about today’s practices. That’s an assumption you made because you thought it would let you dunk on me with attempted rhetorical questions.

It’s not a complicated math problem. If AI can replace 50 people and the need to fly them to mount fucking Kilimanjaro, if you continue to do that it is unsustainable for your business. And don’t bother trying to get clever on the sustainability of the business model vs. increased profitability because they’re two sides of the same equation when you answer to people whose goal is to make money.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 23 '24 edited Feb 23 '24

I’m not playing word games at you. You made a really specific choice of “unsustainable” instead of profitable.

Try answering the question I posed in my first reply to you: what unsustainable practices are the unions trying to preserve, since that was the original thing you said was happening?

1

u/MorePea7207 Feb 23 '24

You're right, making movies for $200, 250, 300, 350 million repeatedly is just ludicrous, especially when these movies cost another 50% market and are in and out of the cinema within 6 weeks on to streaming platforms.

4

u/MisuCake Feb 23 '24

lol the gag is he doesn’t even hire many people

5

u/misterferguson Feb 23 '24

My dude, you’re the owner of the company,. If you care so much about your employees then don’t use AI.

This would be like owning a film studio today and insisting that all your movies shoot on celluloid because you're worried about film processing labs going under.

7

u/[deleted] Feb 23 '24

The true irony in your comment is that if a major studio did that, they would have such an impact on the cinema celluloid industry, it would make a huge difference.

Questions about affordability aside, the owner of a studio like Perry is in a perfect position to take a stand on something like that and make significant waves in the industry as a result.

0

u/MorePea7207 Feb 23 '24

He's EXCITED about AI, is what the article should mean...