Jeffrey Katzenberg, former president of Walt Disney Studios, said today that Artificial Intelligence “is on its way to being the most powerful tool ever for creators”, at a time when generative AI is generating controversy in Hollywood.
“It will be disruptive, but something will replace what will be changed,” said Katzenberg, in a panel on the future of the entertainment industry on the second day of the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. “Some jobs will lose value and become less essential, and others will emerge.”
The person responsible, who was one of the founders of DreamWorks and is now a partner at the investment firm WndrCo., said that he foresees the birth of “an entirely new format of content” based on AI and considered that fears about the technology come from being something unknown.
“When new content appears, a new platform appears”, he stressed. “The audience can always find quality.”
Ynon Kreiz, CEO of Mattel, also spoke about the disruption that is being created by technology and considered that it will act as an amplifier, with quality content and big brands — like Barbie — remaining relevant.
“Although we are going through a period of disruption, entertainment is not going away,” he said. “People are not going to stop spending time on experiences.”
But Lisa Joy, creator of the series ‘Westworld’ and founder of Kilter Films, warned that the overuse of AI will result in ‘clichés’. “Technology isn’t thinking. It’s a big language model that takes ‘online’ archetypes and trends, rearranges them and spits them back out,” she described.
What human breeders do, she said, is the opposite: they look for what’s fresh, what’s untested. “The artist has to be the curator of the content. AI gives us the ‘cliché’ without purpose, without authorship.”
For Janine Sherman Barrois, screenwriter and founder of Folding Chair Productions, AI will truly produce a new form of art and will allow anyone to bypass the industry’s “gatekeepers”. “The question is how are we going to consume content, if everyone is creating it”, she highlighted.
Director Brian Grazer, president of Imagine Entertainment, highlighted in the same panel that we may even have films and series made by Artificial Intelligence, but that there will be differentiation and value in the real creation.
He also considered that children are true “antennas” of authenticity who will know how to distinguish and identify quality programs.
“The entertainment business right now doesn’t incentivize artists,” he said. “Everything is dictated by the economic model of what streaming companies do.”
Still, the panel was optimistic about the future of the industry. The next few years will be one of consolidation, Katzenberg predicted, and uses of AI will emerge that will transform the art of storytelling. There will also be more space for series and films with messages of social value, argued actor and producer Justin Baldoni, founder of Wayfarer Studios.
“I believe we need hope and we have a responsibility to create content that moves the needle,” he said. “We’re going to need it. Hollywood is a microcosm of the macrocosm and we’re seeing everything being dismantled and reintegrated around us. There’s a huge opportunity in reintegration.”
The 27th edition of the Milken Institute Global Conference, which is sometimes referred to as the “Davos of the West”, takes place at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Los Angeles until Wednesday, May 8.
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