\n\t[Some spoilers follow for the current seasons of\u00a0The Comeback\u00a0and\u00a0Paradise]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe new season of\u00a0The Comeback, in addition to heralding the return of one of the great annoying-watchable characters in premium cable television, also introduces an element we\u2019ve yet to see dramatized in comedies: AI<\/a> as plot device.<\/p>\n \n\tKudrow\u2019s Valerie Cherish returns after many years away to find that television, or at least a certain kind of commoditized fast-streaming television, can now be written largely by machine. The show\u2019s cringe-comedy dystopia dances on satire\u2019s edge; are we to laugh at the replacement of human slop<\/a> or fear what else could be taken over? Either way, Kudrow and her fellow executive producer Michael Patrick King leave one truth unchallenged: computers can already do plenty of creative jobs.<\/p>\n \n\tAs the season progresses this sends human writers into a tailspin (\u201cI am just trying to get me and my kids out of this town before it explodes,\u201d Abbi Jacobson\u2019s showrunner character says in an epic rant)\u00a0and a whole industry into a precarious state. Of course whether said industry actually faces mass machine disruption or just Chicken Little doomerism, the (human) writers also leave deliciously vague.<\/p>\n The ambiguity provides a good metaphor for the entertainment business as it stands, or perhaps wobbles, right now. An industry feels on the verge of great change. But whether toward implosion or a needed rebirth remains anyone\u2019s guess, and its many players\u2019 holy crusade.<\/p>\n All with access to a laptop or first-look deal are warrioring, from Gullermo del Toro\u2019s lusty\u00a0award-season anti pronouncements\u00a0<\/a>to Darren Aronofsky<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0earnest tinkering curiosities<\/a>, from Pamela Anderson\u2019s AI-model ban<\/a> to the rise of virtual influencers<\/a> \u2014 and, further downstream, on every WhatsApp thread and lunchtime yap session \u2014 onward endlessly and without resolution. In the finale of this season of Hulu\u2019s\u00a0Paradise Dan Fogelman instead throws up his hands on the question entirely, if craftily: he makes the whole episode turn on whether AI will be our doom or our savior. The characters don\u2019t know, and the real-life writing staff, Fogelman seems to suggest, won\u2019t insult our intelligence\u00a0 by pretending to.<\/p>\n A battle is unfolding across much of creative culture \u2014 unseen to the naked eye, yet everywhere once you start discerning its\u00a0patterns. It\u2019s the fight over whether to welcome this new digital door-knocker or keep the analogue safe and secure, and it plays all the way up to c-suite decisions and all the way down to cultural moments. Volkswagen attempted an anti-tech pro-human message during the Super Bowl with\u00a0an ad that showed earthy pleasures<\/a>\u00a0like dancing in the rain and chasing an ice-cream truck. Not long after OpenAI<\/a> offered its own automotive retort: it has been airing a spot during March Madness in which young-adult brothers fix and take ownership of an old family truck only with the help of ChatGPT.<\/p>\n \n\tThis spectrum provides a lens through which to view so many moves \u2014\u00a0it explains what the Guilds do when they fight AI changes in contract negotiations and filmmakers do when they\u00a0use the tech in their work<\/a>; what awards bodies seek with guidelines for AI and what entrepreneurs attempt when they\u00a0deploy it on masterpieces.<\/a>\u00a0And it casts a light into the existentially jangly mind of so many creatives. As the comic performer Jenny Slate recently told\u00a0THR\u2018s Chris Gardner, \u201cI just want to be an\u00a0actor. Please let me keep being an actor, please. Computers, don\u2019t take my job.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAll of this even while the real-world creative impact of AI lags. For the many VC dollars spent on it, machine intelligence has not yet taken\u00a0charge\u00a0of writers rooms or recording studios; it has thus far refrained from storming the castles of news-production meetings and film-production crews. This, of course, only causes more heel-digging \u2014 nothing spurs divisiveness like a lack of clarity. Will AI take over development and production or just cheerfully help like a P.A. R2-D2? No one knows. Will studios abandon new work for memeslop or nobly resist a descent into IP-management nothingness? Ditto. Everyone sure has an opinion, though.<\/p>\n \n\tThe shocking retreat of Sam Altman and OpenAI from Hollywood<\/a> last week, with the\u00a0axing of Sora and its we-hardly-knew-ye Disney deal<\/a>, underlines the nobody-knows-anything point. Writers exulted at the walkback of shame from a memeslop king who so badly wanted to rule Hollywood, but it probably just means another company will take its place, and don\u2019t those writers all use ChatGPT anyway?\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe moment is an odd\u00a0one. The very holiness that the creative class \u2014 a group led by the firecracker-hurling del Toro but composed of a great majority of working writers, actors and directors, not to mention costume designers, drivers and caterers \u2014 comes to defend is one they derided just moments ago. Movies and television for years have been getting more corporate, more algorithmic, less exciting, less relevant (the writers et al.), as well as less numerous, less shot in America, less financed, less of an opportunity (the production and supporting people). Such realities would hardly seem worth protecting\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s 3:30 in the morning and I\u2019m at a cockfight, what am I clinging to?<\/p>\n \n\tThen again, AI can be seen as part of this same threat that brought about all the previous badness, the possibility of\u00a0machines doing all the work simply the latest and most bruising broadside of a long technocapitalist\u00a0encroachment. Such an ideology animates Justine Bateman and her No AI Film Festival<\/a> and many others in their camp. As Clint Bentley, director of the very human\u00a0Train Dreams,\u00a0also told Gardner, \u201cIt\u2019s weird to be in a time where we are having this conversation and asking ourselves these questions of whether people matter.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOn the other hand, in such a blighted landscape, AI could, perhaps, come not as a vulture to pick over the remains but a new life force to resuscitate them. By handing shotmaking ability to pretty much anyone, advocates argue, we pry control of moviemaking from the very corporate overlords who have been bleeding it of originality. By lowering costs, executives will be more willing to take chances (\u201cYou won\u2019t risk your entire career greenlighting something,\u201d Promise AI<\/a> CEO George Strompolos says). By allowing shoots to happen so easily we lower the stakes on runaway production and make movies abound everywhere (albeit with a diminished need for supporting services), like lab\u00a0diamonds overrunning\u00a0DeBeers. The cartel is dead; gems for everyone.<\/p>\n \n\tThen again, says the anti-AI camp, such a thought experiment only proves the point: it would make diamonds so common as to render them worthless. The slop would take over. If\u00a0anyone\u00a0can make a movie, has anyone really made anything, and how will we find it if they do? The barriers to production ensure that mainly the talented do it and holds back a torrent of slop; with the gatekeepers gone, it comes rushing forth.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd on it goes, a debate without answer, and, sometimes, without consistency. A creative class often dedicated to equity now argues for elites, while a techno-oligarchy\u00a0claims it acts for the people. And through it all, too, a fight over soul: people should be doing the work because only they understand what they\u2019re doing. Or they should make room for machine help and the rush to efficiency, as they always have, as they inevitably will.<\/p>\n \n\tThe lack of resolution makes each side emboldened \u2014 who doesn\u2019t love an argument that can\u2019t be disproven? \u2014 and also makes listening to either side frustrating; who loves an argument that can\u2019t be resolved?<\/p>\n \n\tThe great irony of this Hollywood AI moment lies with its core contradiction:\u00a0a revolution based on predicting the next word can\u2019t seem to know what happens tomorrow. In such a darkness what can we do but seek signal\u00a0and move forward, one megadeal and its cheered collapse at a time.<\/p>\n \n\tThis story appears in\u00a0The Hollywood Reporter\u2019s\u00a0upcoming AI Issue, out in April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Some spoilers follow for the current seasons of\u00a0The Comeback\u00a0and\u00a0Paradise] The new season of\u00a0The Comeback, in addition to heralding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,242904,181,507,21826,3716,33266,1506,1283,15955,33836,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-555065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-digital-issue","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-darren-aronofsky","13":"tag-disney","14":"tag-guillermo-del-toro","15":"tag-hollywood","16":"tag-openai","17":"tag-slop","18":"tag-sora","19":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}