It seems that there are very few jobs that robots are not coming for. Fast food chain Chipotle is rolling out the “Autocado” to get rid of the humans it has to pay to make tasty guacamole. Cops are using bomb-defusing robots to tear-gas suspects out of hiding, and nearly every major company has fired most of its phone staff and replaced them with robot voices that customers are forced to interact with.
Now artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to spook people with jobs in the creative arts, too. Lions Gate Entertainment, one of the biggest Hollywood studios, has just signed a deal with AI company Runway, which describes itself as a “fast-evolving AI startup.” The deal will give Runway access to the back catalog of films Lions Gate owns. The company will use this to train an AI system, and Runway will build Lions Gate a new AI system for use in editing and production.
But it won’t stay confined to editing and production. The kind of AI being discussed is called “generative.” This means it is going to be cranking out new content. Whether this will start or stay with scenery, or with scripting, or some other part of the process, remains to be seen. But it is highly unlikely that the technology will not start replacing human actors, writers, and other creative staff.
Indeed, the studio looks poised to use the AI to make new movies and TV shows.
Actress, filmmaker, and author Justine Bateman is sounding the alarm, and she does not believe the studio’s claimed justification for their new deal with the Runway AI company. Writing on social media, Bateman reminded readers that she has been saying that she does not believe that studio lawyers are meeting with AI companies simply because the studios want to hammer out royalty details. Instead, she believes, they’re trying to figure out how to get their hands on AI programming that will eventually make humans an unnecessary cost of making a movie.
Now that Lionsgate “has a deal with Runway AI,” Bateman wrote, her fears have proven correct. “It is only going to speed up,” she said.
