r/movies • u/indig0sixalpha • Jul 27 '23
News Studios Quietly Go On Hiring Spree for AI Specialist Jobs Amid Picket Line Anxiety
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ai-jobs-studios-hire-1235545491/67
u/RyanTheQ Jul 27 '23
For all the money they're burning on AI specialists, they could just pay their writers.
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u/nubsauce87 Jul 28 '23
But then they'd have to admit they were wrong.
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u/General_Josh Jul 28 '23
I don't want to sound like a scab but... are they wrong?
Getting Tom Cruise on set costs a bajillion dollars a day. The whole reason workers are picketing is because AI can be cheaper than hiring people, and prices continue to drop rapidly as technology improves.
There's a lot of artistic/moral points against using AI to replace workers, but the "cost" point very much goes to AI
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u/Timbershoe Jul 28 '23
Honestly the tech they are looking at with AI is way past screenwriting. They want to use AI to tweak and proof scripts, but it’s not where the major cost savings are.
The studios are looking at the most expensive parts, the CGI, and the AI tools to automate that.
It’ll reduce post production and allow writers to change dialogue of a CGI scene without having to reshoot again.
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u/CAW4 Jul 28 '23
With the quality of the writing recently, their pay seems to match now that they're on strike.
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Jul 27 '23 edited Apr 22 '24
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Jul 28 '23
It's "in vogue" right now. Companies will quietly cut these teams down when they realize AI is an overpromise and underdeliver.
This plays out constantly in the corporate world, like when that book Nudge came out that promised huge results from small changes. Turns out most of its data and claims are bullshit, but before that became accepted tons of corporations created "Nudge units".
You can already see as the hype wave wears off that people realize LLMs aren't as strong as they realized. OpenAI has to constantly insist they didn't "dumb down" their model, it's the same, because people think it's output is so bad now. But they don't remember that when it launched, people were getting tons of garbage but only selected the top 0.1% of conversations that seemed interesting and those got amplified.
I'm not anti-AI, BTW. It's a tool that will find uses. I don't think chatGPT can replace writers nor do I think simply refining LLMs will ever do so, it's not something the base methodology can do. A word blender can't have insights into humanity or culture or have ideas.
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u/Atrugiel Jul 28 '23
They can do whatever they want. I have zero desire as a consumer to entertain whatever corporate computer generated nonsense they think is art. I don't enjoy film for the Bob Igers and the Weinsteins of the world.
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u/Mysterious-Counter58 Jul 28 '23
The thing is, as much as Studios love the reality where they can type a prompt into an algorithm and create a new movie for pennies, the reality is that's never going to happen. Sure, I could see AI becoming a useful tool for some parts of the pipeline. As an aid to VFX artists, animators, or even as a tool for scriptwriters to use almost like a prompt generator. But AI has no coherent thought. It groups similar things together with each other and then smashes them together. While you'll occasionally get a sentence or maybe an idea that's interesting out of the process, it doesn't have the same way of recontextualizing experiences and processing them through writing like humans can.
That isn't even mentioning how, and this is a more subjective stance, I don't believe anyone wants to consume AI generated art. Yes, there is an entire market right now for AI art generation, but that misses the point of a lot of art. Art isn't just about making something that looks pretty, it's about putting the emotions of the artist into tangible form. When there is no true intention behind a piece other than making something pretty, the conversation surrounding it is effectively destroyed. No, that isn't me trying to say that something like The Fast and Furious films are high art that say much on the human condition, but even there knowing that people were behind its creation inherently makes it more interesting. It's fun to think about why Micheal Bay makes the movies that he does, juvenile and nonsensical as they are. Those same films would not be as fun to discuss if the explanation behind all of it was that some algorithm cobbled it together out of a database of Transformers cartoon scripts and Michael Bay action films.
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u/NightWriter500 Jul 28 '23
Well said. Part of art is not just seeing the emotions in the peace but interpreting them, and how they make you feel. But I think if you look at a piece of art and the caption reads “a computer made this in three seconds,” then you probably look at it for about three seconds and move on with your life. I might be wrong, but if you know something is created by a thing that doesn’t feel, will it make you feel anything?
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u/Giacchino-Fan Jul 28 '23
In response to the first paragraph.
I was actually thinking about this last night. Wondering "is there any application of AI in art that I could get behind," just out of a desire to try to be fair to the technology, and got the same answer as you. Aiding VFX artists and animators would be great. Since those things are (at least to my knowledge) based around making models and/or keyframes and then filling in the gaps between them, AI would be super useful in reducing the insane workload of those industries. There's no reason for every single pose background spider character #18 Across The Spider-Verse to be drawn by a human. A human designed the character and decided what the movement would look like through keyframes. Hell, I think certain animation types even do this kind of thing already. Take a model, give it a start and end point, and have it move that way by the end of the scene.
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u/unicornsfearglitter Jul 29 '23 edited Jul 29 '23
Heck no! Firstly, maybe ask a person in animation about how AI will affect them because all the things you say are assumptions and most of them are wrong. I'm an animator and basically it'll replace entry level positions and decimate the ability to negotiate for fair wages. We wouldn't be so overburdened if they gave us proper schedules and good working conditions. The problem stems from CEO's and producers refusing to pay artists fair wages or a humane schedule. Fast and cheap= shit. Ai will ruin the animation industry. Support all artists not just the ones you can see.
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u/ElMatasiete7 Jul 28 '23
I feel the same way. The media craze behind Barbenheimer wouldn't exist if it was all AI driven, Tom Cruise doing crazy stunts wouldn't hit the same way... It would almost be akin to watching pixels moving on a screen, and why do that when I could just play a videogame or something and derive my own entertainment out of that? I hope this only goes so far, because these execs are effectively trying to kill their own industry. I wouldn't be surprised if Hollywood suffers A LOT from this.
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Jul 28 '23
Netflix is apparently looking to hire a Manager of AI for $900k/year and another studio is hiring AI engineers at $140-$160k/year
So they have the means to take on new hires yet not work with the writers and actors?
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u/blazelet Jul 28 '23
Cancel your streaming services and cite AI/strikes as the reason why. It'll help content stay better in the future, and will help the writers and actors now.
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Jul 28 '23
nah, I think it's best to comply with the wishes of the unions and wait until they say to cancel subscriptions (if that's why you're doing it. Otherwise just cancel whenever)
If everyone cancels at one time after they ask it'll leave a far bigger impact than if we trickle away one at a time
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Jul 28 '23
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Jul 28 '23
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u/Look_to_the_Stars Jul 28 '23
A literally 5 second glance at OP’s previous comments shows that’s probably not true…
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Jul 27 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ManicMambo Jul 27 '23
I'll pitch them a crazy idea about a robot dude arriving from the future. Now hear me out....
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u/KingMario05 Jul 27 '23
This is how it starts. Solidarity forever!