Tag: DGA

The Hollywood Studios Have The High Ground At The Moment

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I feel kind of sorry for the major Hollywood trade unions. It definitely seems like they’re kind of fucked. I say this because I’m using ChatGPT and Bing to develop my first novel and the potential is definitely there. I say this because I sometimes have to fight with these LLMs and remind them that *I* am the fucking writer.

In the not-too-distant future, Hollywood will look like this: well paid Suits, ok paid programmers and…interns who are “prompt engineers.” And even the idea of a prompt engineer is will seem quaint when, soon enough, we reach a Her-type future in which people have digital assistants who know everything about them to the point that there will be no need for a “prompt engineers” in the first place.

With that in mind, all the Suits have to do is just cool their heels and snort coke off hooker assholes until AI advances to the point that that they end writing as Hollywood professional, period. The way things are going, the WGA (and SAG?) strike would only have to last 18 months before AI makes writing in Hollywood very very very moot.

I say this as a writer who loves writing, is writing a novel and wishes to be a screenwriter in Hollywood one day. But just like you can’t go to Windows on The World to eat anymore, the day may come when….being a professional writer or actor or director in Hollywood is just a quaint memory…..

Never Fear, DGA, AI Will Make You Moot, TOO

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, as I understand it, the Directors’ Guild of America membership is on the cusp of approving a new three year contract with the studios. They pretty much licked that particular boot without saying a word.

Soon enough there won’t be anyone left in Hollywood but suits, programmers and a few “prompt engineers” who are little more than interns. And that last category won’t last very long when technology to generate entire movies without any prompt at all comes along.

We’re probably going to have to go through a civil war / revolution starting in late 2024, early 2025 before we get around to that, of course.

What the three major creative unions need to demand is hard and fast carveouts for what a human can do that an AI can’t do. Or something like that. If they don’t do that, Hollywood as we’ve known it for 100 years won’t exist anymore. It will be a regular bonfire of the vanities.

In fact, I think it’s possible that Hollywood will be the first victim of the Petite Singularity that seems to be careening towards us at an alarming rate. It could be that it won’t be high paying, blue collar trucker jobs that will go — poof! — it will be deep blue writing jobs in Hollywood.

It’s all happening so fast that the system just isn’t prepared to handle the abrupt change. There just isn’t going to be any need for directors, or actors or writers. It will all be done by AI of one type or another.

Good luck, my fellow creatives.