Artificial intelligence Part 3: specific industry impacts - film and television

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The impact of AI is the most pronounced in the film and television industry with a variety of occupations impacted by the technology. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA union strikes in the United States in 2023 highlighted the concerns of people employed in the creative industries. Breaking down the various subsectors in the film and television industry, the role of AI can be easily defined -

CGI and VFX production

AI now covers environmental generation, crowd simulation, rotoscoping, motion cleanup, texture creation, background characters. 

• Rotoscoping, cleanup and compositing are traditionally large pools of junior labour and these tasks are being automated rapidly. Mid-tier VFX companies are under existential pressure with work bifurcating toward very high-end boutique work but the commodity work is fully AI generated. The roles that are disappearing are junior asset builders, repetitive compositing roles and the large teams that produce background elements.
• AI tools are Unreal Engine, Blender, Runway, Sora and similar programs.

Acting and performance

AI can and is already producing synthetic actoprs to create digital doubles and AI-generated crowds.

• Background artists are already displaced due to AI generated crowds and extras in a limited manner. This displacement of extras, crowd performers and minor background roles is expected to increase.
• Voice acting is severely threatened as synthetic voices are increasingly now near indistinguishable from real human voices and can be used for minor characters, video games, commericals and dubbing. Studios can licence a voice and use it indefinately.
• AI tools are Nvidia and Runway AI

Writing

AI can already operate to develop plot structure, dialogue drafts, storyboarding, episode outlines, alternate scene ideas. Writers room teams that once had 6-12 junior writers now only require a headwriter, 2-3 senior writers and AI-assisted drafting tools. A showrunner with AI-assistance may need only 2-3 senior writers rather than a full room.

Localisation and dubbing is already occuring using AI replacing human translators and lip sync dubbing artists at scale.

The reality is that with time and patience, AI will enable very small teams to produce cinema-qulaity films. Early versions of AI films can already be found on YouTube however many of these projects suffer from continuity failures and many technical deficiencies in storytelling structure.

The safest roles in the AI-era are those positions with creative authority, not basic production. Examples could be roles such as showrunner, art director, creative director, lead animator, production designer. These are decision-making roles and decide what should exist rather than merely producing it.