Here we go: An operative fed his vacation video to an AI, creating a wild and surreal video of himself transforming while traveling, offering a glimpse into how AI content is becoming its own media type. (Screenshot)
The generative AI revolution is less than two years old, but the debate about AI in Hollywood resembles the debate about automation in Detroit in the 1980s. Sure, robot welders annoyed unions and made for more efficient assembly lines, but the cars they produced didn't change all that much. If you worked in the dreary caverns of a Ford factory back then, you could never have imagined that automation would eventually lead to Tesla a few decades later, or, if you've seen Waymo in Los Angeles in the past six months, to self-driving cars.
As we've explored since launching Reel AI, artificial intelligence today can play a role in everything from script writing to voice-overs to actor rejuvenation. While some of the technology is impressive, Hollywood leaders need to think beyond simply using AI to cut costs and use it to create unprecedented spectacles and experiences, like real-time personalized highlight reels.
But I didn't think we had a Tesla moment yet, much less a Waymo moment, until I watched a man feed video of his vacation into an AI to create the most surreal, can't-look-away experience I'd ever seen. Over the course of 80 seconds, the man developed water jets for his feet, transformed into a surfing dinosaur, and split into dozens of lizards.
The most disruptive forces for media have always been entirely new environments that shift basic behaviors in time from the privileged, protected spaces of older media to entirely new, less boring destinations. Think of how television upended radio and cable destroyed the protected gardens of network television. More recently, consider Hollywood’s failure to properly anticipate the forces most disruptive to its core existence: user-generated video (YouTube), SVOD (Netflix), and the swirling kaleidoscope of short-form entertainment (TikTok).
So the question arises: Will AI not only disrupt the content creation process, but also time-shift viewing to entirely new formats? What if that fundamental shift changes viewing behavior and where we watch? If so, when we think about how AI will disrupt the dusty backlots of studios, we need to accept that the answer may lie outside of Hollywood, and that it may take away hours of consumers' time that could be spent watching movies and series.
In this article, you'll learn:
Evidence that there is a market for a platform dedicated to AI content
There are several notable micro-communities that are seeing increased interest in AI content:
Aiming to become “AI's HBO”
What are the current efforts at destination sites focused on AI content?
Some recent examples of strange and seemingly impossible video manipulations that have people excited
Hard lessons Hollywood has learned from the rise of Twitch, Crunchyroll and TikTok
How should Hollywood respond to this new medium (probably without lawsuits)?
