{"id":619821,"date":"2026-09-18T08:52:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:52:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/619821\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T08:52:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:52:40","slug":"execs-battle-misconceptions-figure-out-ais-place-in-the-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/619821\/","title":{"rendered":"Execs Battle Misconceptions, Figure Out AI’s Place in the Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn a world where AI is capturing every conversation<\/a>, a series of experts is trying to figure out what it actually means for the world of entertainment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think the word \u2018AI\u2019 is doing too much right now,\u201d says Mira Line, Google\u2019s vice president of technology and society. \u201dOne of the things that we\u2019re doing, especially with the industry, is figuring out, well, what does AI mean in the industry? How do you break it down?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLane made her comments alongside several entertainment and tech personalities during the \u201cEntertainment and Media in the Age of AI\u201d\u00a0panel, one of several AI-focused conversations happening at Variety\u2019s Entertainment and Tech Summit presented by EY. Moderated by Variety business editor Todd Spangler, the conversation saw executives from Netflix (Girish Balakrishnan, the streamer\u2019s senior director, creative innovation), Lionsgate (Kathleen Grace, its chief AI officer), Hasbro (Bertie Thomson, head of its AI-focused studio Sixth Wall), Teads (Annaka Vasquez, senior vice president of sales) and Adobe (Meagan Keane, Pro Video\u2019s head of business strategy) come together to walk through AI\u2019s place in entertainment and the use cases for versions of the technology \u2014\u00a0once people figure out how to talk about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat comes down to building relationships with creators about how it can be used, including where it fits within the production landscape. Balakrishnan highlighted Netflix\u2019s public framework for how the company uses AI within its production pipeline (on a generative level, for roughly 300 programs<\/a>), a model he said \u201cbuilds trust with the creative community\u201d and gives those members \u201da pathway to navigate to drive use cases that are meaningful to the creative process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe industry is already landing on other frameworks surrounding AI\u2019s place in the industry, such as the Kathleen Kennedy and American Film Institute-led \u201cHuman Generative Workflows\u201d paper published<\/a> last month. Lane helped develop the paper, which she said breaks down the use cses in ways that can help AI-backed productions reach a still-elusive goal: being copyrightable.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe did a whole exercise around tooling and looking at everything from de-noising techniques to fully synthetic characters,\u201d\u00a0she said. \u201cLet\u2019s start thinking about the vocabulary and breaking it down so it\u2019s not just AI as one big monolithic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAdobe has tried to help distinguish that in its own tools, Keane said, delineating between \u201cassistive,\u201d\u00a0\u201ccorrective\u201c\u00a0and \u201cgenerative\u201d\u00a0functions. That allows users who\u2019ve found those use cases to prosper, she said. \u201cPeople don\u2019t even really realize that they\u2019re AI anymore because so much of the conversation has shifted to generative,\u201d\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tSome of that trust built between companies and those working in the AI space has offered up another elusive item in the field: intellectual property, including renowned brands and high-profile characters.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Companies] are very careful about how we use those creative assets to maintain the integrity of the brand,\u201d\u00a0Vasquez said about Teads\u2019\u00a0work with ad sales. \u201cWe have AI models to build the creative, but for those world\u2019s largest brands, there\u2019s a lot of scrutiny around that. So what I\u2019m looking forward to, and the brands that we partner [with] look forward to, is what are the guardrails in place?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHasbro, through its Sixth Wall work, has worked to implement proprietary guardrails for the ElevenLabs-backed AI replicas<\/a> of characters it licenses, such as those of Cobra Commander and Optimus Prime. While companies can license those characters for interactive experiences \u2014\u00a0one hypothetical Thomson offered was a Waymo with the voice of Prime \u2014\u00a0those can\u2019t be manipulated in the way many unauthorized clips of Hasbro characters have been.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you think about the existence of lots of unauthorized characters out there\u2026 they\u2019re not necessarily safe for our brand,\u201d\u00a0Thomson said. \u201cWhereas working on the authorized AI version of the character means that, for these actors, it has a protective value for them too, and also for us as IP owners.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, each company is still working through public misconceptions surrounding AI, whether the idea models are preparing for humanity\u2019s imminent destruction or the notion that full-fledged blockbusters can be create with a quick prompting of ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey don\u2019t understand that, when you\u2019re making really premium movies, TV shows, really engaging stories the way that Lionsgate and others on the stage do, the technology you have to use there is more complex than just prompting. It\u2019s a whole process,\u201d\u00a0Lane said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of consideration that goes into everything we make, and in my role, I\u2019m here [saying] here are the tools you could use to make your thing better, bigger, more, and get to the end of the production faster. You choose what\u2019s best for the story, and then, great, you chose the thing that\u2019s best for your story, and it\u2019s better. It\u2019s not necessarily what people think of in pop culture. It\u2019s not like ChatGPT. We just can\u2019t throw something onto that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the end, each leader said they wanted the technology to help creatives tell better \u2014\u00a0and more \u2014\u00a0stories, not feel like they have to adopt the technology for the sake of staying ahead.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFilmmakers aren\u2019t asking, \u2018Do I want to use AI or not?\u2019 They\u2019re looking to solve meaningful creative problems that they\u2019re faced with on their shows,\u201d Balakrishnan said, citing several Netflix programs that made use of generative AI. \u201cI think those are the opportunities that creators are looking for, and that\u2019s where AI comes specific as an option to be able to solve real creators.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt can also, in Grace\u2019s view, help studios find and distribute new stories from creators who\u2019ve utilized AI tools to help bring their visions to life. She cited the worlds of \u201cJohn Wick\u201d\u00a0and \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d\u00a0as examples of work the company has done to sell well-liked IP, and that it wants to have \u201call kinds of filmmakers we work with.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJust look at the range of our slate from this year: \u2018Housemaid,\u2019 \u2018Michael,\u2019 \u2018Sunrise [on the Reaping]\u2019,\u201d\u00a0she said. \u201cThose are all very different filmmakers and different stories. To me, it\u2019s just more creative people, and in some ways, easier to find them because the tools are democratized. Is it going to be an exciting challenge to bring in more talented people who have access to tools? Yes, but I\u2019m interested to see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a world where AI is capturing every conversation, a series of experts is trying to figure out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,280242,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-619821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ent-tech-2026-recap","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}