- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
Wow it’s almost like people’s tolerance for ruthless exploitation isn’t infinite. Hollywood’s disgusting parasitic grifters can get fucked.
I don’t care how fast AI can pump out “high quality content” because I refuse to consume any of it. I really hope the strikes are successful.
If it is high quality, why do you care how it was produced?
But it’s not the high quality content that’s threatened by AI, it’s the mediocre gargabe. It’s the endless stream of poor quality TV shows and movies which are produced not as art, but as a means of steady predictibile income for the companies involved. That’s the industry aspect of the business. This side of the business consumes most of the talent in the industry. They all know it’s not good and they all hope they will get the funding to actually work on the things they know will be high quality. I think AI will allow them to do that.
Further more, this strike is not just about AI. I think this aspect is the one media outlets care most about and gets reported on more. The entertainment industry has suffered a major shift with streaming platforms and the movement of money from production studios to streaming platforms has left the employees behind. They’re getting less money from streaming platforms but still do the same work. That’s what the strike is about. The industry didn’t care for them when it changed.
To answer your question about quality: it matters because it’s not real. The act of producing something of quality is what makes us better people. It ties into motivation to be better. Computers automating repetition doesn’t hinder that (as much, it does affect learning curves). The notion that computers be used for an output that would normally require creativity is just throwing away the essense of creation, the end product is not the only thing that benefits us. There’s no objective to why it was created, an AI writing something that evokes emotion is a party trick. All it really does is promote consumption and demoralize innovation, and ironically it hides behind innovation as the end-goal of the project. It’s just dead. One of the most beautiful things within creating something of value is the very process of creating it, having the passion and desire to do so, and the will to bring it into existence. AI is a cursed attempt at trying to replicate this process, and by lifting that kind of burden from a human inhuman.
I agree with you when it comes to AI in its current form - I wouldn’t even call it a party trick, just dumb luck. Machine learning through repetition will use existing ideas and tropes.
However you can provide the model with unique ideas, new tropes, characters, environments, and settings. The model in its current form could generate something nearly usable (script wise) and still be a valid piece of art with some cleaning up. Just because you save time doesn’t make an idea less “good”
In the future we could have near sentient AI that generates actual pieces of art far faster and better than a person can.
There’s no objective to why it was created, an AI writing something that evokes emotion is a party trick.
Then it’s not valuable. The question still stands: if something is truly valuable, does it matter how it was created? You are not answering this question, you are simply pointing out why AI in your opinion cannot produce art. My question is a bit “tongue in cheek”, of course. It cannot be truly answered without a specific example of creation. I’m asking it to prove a point: we’re dismissing something we don’t understand.
All it really does is promote consumption and demoralize innovation
I’d argue that this is what Hollywood already does. And as you rightly argued through your comment, it brings little artistic or creative value.
To me, it’s the same feeling as the teachers that wouldn’t accept papers written on a computer (after an age where we know how to write) because “it’s less honest”.
I’m not good at drawing. I would love to try to make a game. Anti-AI luddites are happy that I will never produce something because I am incabable of doing something that an AI could easily accomplish.
Lol, ok.
I can’t wait for you to like something then change your mind when you find out it’s made by AI.
Lol.
i refuse to believe AI can replace totally of the human part in the industry. Yeah some of the weak actors will be pushed out as they are not doing the job good enough, but it’s inevitable that one day technology is advanced that AI can actually replace human workforce. Like car manufacturing industry that have massive machines to assemble car parts, but also there are things only human can do. We don’t need crappy scriptwriters writing rubbish soap opera that my 10 year old daughter can write because they are no more generic than a AI churn out script. It’s like hiring a typewriter operator in 2023. Or rubbish actors that are like reading their script out with minimal effort and skills. It does not make sense.
typewriter operator in 2023
There’s this people called stenographers who are paid quite well, they can write hundreds of words per minute and essentially transcribe a conversation in real time. They are hired by courts to create records of the sessions, by journalists, parliaments and to transcribe subtitles for audiovisual media. They use this cool typewriter like machine called a stenotype that was invented in 1880. The thing is, they tried to replace them with speech recognition computers. They discovered they needed a human to sanitize input for the computer, essentially a person who can speak really fast and really mechanically, repeating what others said in the room, or what was said in the movie or whatever, into an oxygen-mask-like sound proof microphone. So, they still had to pay someone to be there. Many places decided they could just pay the stenographer and receive higher quality products despite the slightly higher costs. Then YouTube tried to use machine learning to auto-create closed captions. Before that they used a community contribution approach that depended on volunteers to take some time to transcribe the subs. That change to automation was such a fiasco that some big YouTube channels now advertise that they pay an actual company with humans to do the closed captions for their videos in the name of proper quality accessibility. Because automated closed caption tends to do interesting stuff and it’s even worse when they try to throw auto-translation into the mix.
The point is, people tend to not understand technology and how it relates to humans, specially techbros and techies who have the most skewed biases towards tech and little sociological understanding. Nothing can be accurately predicted in that realm, and most relations that result from the appearance of new technology are usually paradoxical to common sense.
I’m looking for an interaction with the artists. I do not care what an AI produces… and I don’t care what a marketing team or boardroom of producers produces. I’m looking for an artist’s vision.
Then hollywood is the wrong place to look. AI can make it even worse, but hollywood has been mostly devoid of expressing artistic vision long before AI came around.
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You’re just not going to give up this crusade are you? Going to start comparing salaries of line workers to starving kids in Africa again?
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because I refuse to consume any of it
I guarantee you already have and didn’t notice.
There’s a philosophical argument to be made for sure, and I’d probably even agree with you. But the reality is that the technology is here, and it’ll be used in pursuit of the almighty buck.
I saw a great strike sign- “I refuse to memorize lines written by a machine.”
But why? I feel like people are twisting their arguments against AI. Or they are being twisted against.
Why does an actor care where there lines come from? We live in a world where The Room was written and released, but AI content is going to be the end of media? People aren’t that special. Our thoights aren’t that special. We don’t have souls. We’re just thinking machines, and nothing we create is more unique than something that we created creates.
honestly we need legislation that protects artists who use their art as a means to live
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So like, North Korea. Just a bunch of farmers and the military. I’d rather live in a world with joy and innovation.
That is one way to view it. However due to everyone, in including blue collar workers, having their lively hoods threatened by AI we need to ask the question if were okay, as a society, for there to be more jobs eliminated than created. Are we okay with the current ways and (some would say the illusion of) the free market controlling everything? Are we okay with letting people suffer needlessly? Would you be okay with looking into the eyes of someone you know and saying “too bad that’s the free market baby!” Because it’s starting with the arts but it’s not stopping there. It’s only a matter of time before it will not need many warm bodies to do things. The knowledge works are next on the list and it won’t be long after that where manual labors will be impacted. This is all WAY before we even hit AGI.
I’m not saying that AI taking jobs is a bad thing. I think it is an amazing thing but we need to start embracing it as an opportunity for things to be more Star Trek and less dystopian hellscape. That means changing this mindset that a lot of us have and start asking ourselves how do we want the world to look in 100 or even 500 years from now.
HTH
You sound like a copypasta genertor
I do too hope the strikes are successful. That said, you’ve likely already been consuming generative technology for some time now. Disney alone has nearly a decade of research into it already. Advanced VFX applications use all sorts of generative tech too. When I was working in LA we referenced public data all the time. I know it’s gotten a huge spotlight on it given private AI capitalizing/evangelizing it all but the very real threat of digital scabs taking people’s jobs needs the biggest spotlight right now. I do think the tables will turn if nothing good can come out of Hollywood and those artists begin weaponizing that same tech against the execs. I see what studios are doing as no different than impersonation & identity theft by using this tech to limit working hours to skirt union protections.
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It’s funny to me because all these people are saying exactly what everyone used to say about mobile phones, about the internet, about computers… I know so many people who railed against the internet saying they’d never use it and that computers only make things more difficult - now they’re all yelling on Facebook about how the evil corporations they work for aren’t letting them work from home lol
AI will keep getting better and the way people use it will continue to evolve, there will be truly great things made by obsessive outsiders which speak to people in ways nothing has… Just like with every minor technical or social Innovation in art. Many of the giants of the old era will vanish and many new greats will grow and start to stagnate into conformity…
I’m excited for the future and all the interesting things it brings, we can’t just stop creativity and progress because some affluent performers want guarantees of stability which just don’t exist in reality
I hope there is some kind of “label” that comes out of this like the Surgeon General’s cigarette warning. “This movie is 87% AI generated” so I won’t have to bother thinking about whether to skip it. Fuck lazy & greedy movie makers. They’d giveup their immortal soul for $3.50
I’ve been “striking” for a long time now, against junk TV in general. There’s an occasional awesome show that delivers but 95% of it is low-effort junk TV like dating, survival, cooking and other shows like it.
I haven’t had live TV in years and it’s quite shocking to see what the average user deals with. Junk TV + ads that play 30% of the time is absolutely insane.
low-effort junk TV like dating, survival, cooking and other shows like it.
… in other words, exactly the shows that don’t use actors or writers
Huh. When you put it that way…
I haven’t had live TV in years and it’s quite shocking to see what the average user deals with. Junk TV + ads that play 30% of the time is absolutely insane.
Yeah, I’ve had the same experience. We don’t have live TV, and when we occasionally hang out with friends or family who do I’m always flabbergasted at the frequency and length of ad breaks nowadays, and similarly amazed that despite a nearly endless list of channels there never seems to be anything I actively want to watch.
I can’t believe the people that allow commercials to blare in their living rooms without diving for the remote control like the house is on fire. Is it just me? and they just continue normal conversation like it’s somehow possible to hear them.
My parents still have cable TV (I just got them a Roku not long ago, so fingers crossed…), and at this point I can’t stand to watch it for more than about one and a half commercial breaks. It’s hard to believe anybody willingly subjects themselves to that trash when ad-free alternatives are available.
I had one of them first TiVos, then upgraded to them expanded versions modes online for 1TB of shows. The 30-second skip button pressed six(6) times would effectively (skip) the ads. Never looked back. When I see or hear a commercial at someone’s house it rocks me like I’m in a different dimension and time.
Personally I rarely watch TV in real time, so the only time of year I ever really see commercials is during the NFL season.
Bruce was talking about it 30 years ago when we had 57 channels and nothin’ on. It’s only gotten worse since then.
lol only 30%?
jokes but i agree… i remember going to visit some relatives and sat and watched tv with them… i too was so shocked at how they’d sit idly thru commercials jarring into their show, slapping them in the face…
i can’t stand it. just about anything i watch, when i watch, is commercial free
I think they get that from most half hour shows are 22 minutes and hour shows only 42 minutes.
But if course networks have been known to cut them back even further to squeeze some more ads in
You forgot animated sitcom that either lasts 6 episodes or 16 seasons
Hey now! Some of us like the cooking shows lol
Yeah. I’ll watch an occasional Gordon Ramsay here and there. I’m more referring to the baking shows, kids cooking shows and similar. But you know what I mean, replace all variants of cooking with the many variants of home improvement, how many do we need?
Yea there are simply too many, they’ve flooded the airways with a lot of garbage instead of a small amount of quality that reruns
Even the most high effort shows have so much useless digression and pointless characters that are developed and killed off in a single episode.
This is the best possible outcome. No one wants that AI generated shit while actors and behind the scenes people make starvation wages.
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So if we’re going to have AI replacing Actors, Animators, VAs, Writers and everything there’s going to be a lot less people to pay and ticket prices will go down by 90% right?
The whole population will benefit from AI and not just people who already make way too much money like it happened with pretty much every other technological innovation right?
Bro you are waaaaayyyyy overly optimistic on who AI is gonna benefit :) . It won’t be the 99% in the end.
That was sarcasm, I thought the “Right? Right?” was enough to give it away lol
Dont listem to them, they are trolling
Just like WallStreet, the ultimate goal is to also replace audiences entirely with AI sentient viewers. That way they can create millions of viewers who will be pre-primed to want to watch the same pieces of media several hundred times. They can even view the movie at 500% speed so they can do so in a shorter timespan than meat viewers. OpenAI will be the first company to offer culturally insensitive and politically neutral 100% synthetic audiences to feed your Hollywood releases. For just cents per 1 million viewers/hour you too can release a blockbuster. This includes Twitch and YouTube audiences!
So your argument isn’t against AI, it’s against studios. Or your argument is against us, and our complacency when it comes to corporate or profit overreach.
I don’t see how you could take that as an argument against AI in general. Stanley Yelnatz wasn’t wrong for looking for the shorter shovel.
Sure, just like my gripe is mainly with school shooters rather than with guns, and with crazy billionaires rather than with social media.
But since you can’t realistically regulate the users to a healthy level, you have to regulate the tool. Because, just like those other two things, the benefit it brings to regular people is minuscule compared to the harm it can do.
The whole population will benefit from AI and not just people who already make way too much money like it happened with pretty much every other technological innovation right?
Humanity benefited from the invention of the printing press. Humanity benefited from the industrial revolution. Humanity benefited from the invention of computers. Humanity will benefit from AI too, greatly so. This is not what is up for debate. Some people made fortunes from it, but does that matter when you compare it to how much good it brought about?
Did it really benefit that much from it though? We can now be infinitely more productive while working, but are still required to work the same work week and have the same purchasing power, if not less in some countries. And the products made with that work cost pretty much the same, even though it costs much less to produce them.
Very rarely a technological innovation actually ended up improving common people’s quality of life, and the ones that did were due to being improving of the end product in nature.
AI doesn’t improve the end product (rather, currently it worsens it), it just improves the efficiency. And like with the Industrial Revolution, people will get paid the same, will have to work the same amount of time, and their end products will cost the same. CEOs will benefit from it and no one else, if history says anything.
You probably don’t know history.
Just from a quick Google search. Skip to the end if you want raw hour comparison.
I’ll gladly accept a huge AI implementation if it means cutting even 20% of current working hours while keeping the same salary, but I’m really skeptical on that.
That’s not what I’m debating. What about healthcare? What about acces to education? What about infant death rates? What about travel? What about not having to worry about starvation? Clean water directly into your home? Hot water too? Electricity? Have these not improved the quality of life greatly? You must not know history if you think your average peasant was living a better life preindustrialisation.
I’m not sure what work you’re doing at the moment but you seem pretty burned out by it. Maybe it’s time for a change
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Hollywood is dead anyway. They just make superhero movies for china now
They’ve been making alternate versions of every movie for china since 2008. Especially disney. Disney is such a cuck to china that they declared all the winnie the pooh characters as public domain to appease Ping.
Fake news, these are all crisis actors. They didn’t even try I’ve seen many of these people in movies!
These crisis actors can literally be anyone, it could be you, it could even be gasp me!
Good. More please. Hold these cucks accountable.
Destroying the planet for infinite wealth.
You wanna get really mad? A new practice they were trying to pull off was bring in some young good looking actors; do 3d body scans, record a bunch of voice data, and then have them allow the studios a perpetual license to use their likeness for a few thousand bucks. How evil is that?
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Yeah! I’m sick of it. Not only do they want infinite money but also infinite growth.
Literally like a cancer. Feasting on society until nothing is left.
This. I want more strikes. I’m tired of everything going to shit and the masses sit back and do nothing. I’ve gone to a few protests recently, and honestly it’s cheap therapy for me. Feels nice to actually DO something.
And what have you actually accomplished with marching and shouting? I went to quite a few BLM protests back in 2020, got tear gassed and shit along with my friends, and yet still haven’t seen anything meaningful change.
I think it’s even more goddamn nefarious than just destroying the planet for wealth - if some of the shit I’ve been reading is right, then AI has changed the game and this strike is our fucking chance to get ahead of the shit that these studios want to pull. In what world is it okay to pay an actor a single day’s worth of work and retain their likeness in pepertuiry using AI generation.
I’ll admit that I’m not very knowledge on the whole workings of the AI part of it, but I do feel like every actor should have full control over their likeness and how it should be recorded and how it is applied to AI.
The 1% would murder us all and replace us with AI if given the chance, never forget that. They’d be too stupid to realize that the AI bots would take them out next.
Is $25,000 per annum a living wage LA? To think that these are getting so little is nuts.
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“Low income”, as defined by the state, is anything below $70,650 in Los Angeles county.
I’m glad more and more workers are realizing the power they have over the industries they’re working in.
Without the workers, the businesses have nothing. We really need to have a serious revolution before they replace all jobs with AI robots.
They’re fighting a losing battle, but I hope a side effect of it is that new people come in and change both the economics and artistry of Hollywood. Most Hollywood content sits in a very rigid box. It’s repetitive, unoriginal, and unappealing. People are encouraged to eat ramen for every meal in order to “make it”, simply because far too many of them try (which is partially the result of the “follow your dreams” narrative in America as well). The further down you are, the worse your compensation. Good ideas get missed or thrown out and relegated to dollar theatres all the time.
If this strike goes on long enough that it starts to flush people out, I’m ok with that. Sucks for the people who are going to lose their livelihoods, but for some of them that was an eventuality. Hopefully in the end creators will have more creative freedom and receive more proportional compensation.
The movie industry needs a bigger market for independent movies. Look at the videogames, the indies are holding the creativity among a similar crisis for the aaa titles as for the movies. We need an “EA Orginals” for the majors…
Indy game industry has exploded thanks to benevolent monopoly of Steam. There was a chance for indy cinema when Netflix started, but that’s long gone with every studio having their own streaming service.
But I wanna see Indiana Jones 6: The search for more money!
They’re fighting a losing battle, but I hope a side effect of it is that new people come in and change both the economics and artistry of Hollywood. Most Hollywood content sits in a very rigid box. It’s repetitive, unoriginal, and unappealing.
My two cents is there’s a structural issue that’s converged to strictly Campbellian story-telling as the end-all-be-all structure. Sure, you’ll have something come out of HBO or AppleTV that breaks it, but AAA movies rarely break it.
Having 20 writers so you don’t have to pay them as much really dilutes any narrative structure.
incredibly based. fuck the execs. fucking parasites
Good to see actors, many whom get just the base for their work, stand up for what they deserve.
Good to see some solidarity. I wish it happened more. I’d have thought that the spread internet, allowing easy and covert communication, would have caused a proliferation in the number and efficacy of labor unions, but alas.
The Internet has done a ton of that, around the world. But the news focuses on negative stories because, psychologically, humans are much more compelled by negative stories
Whole lot of the bigger establishments have been going through the ringer lately