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Comment by boh | Hacker News Reader

There's a huge gap between "that's pretty cool" and a feature length film. People want to create specific stories with specific scenes in specific places that look a specific way. A "Couple kissing in the rain " prompt isn't going to produce something people are going to pay to see.

It's more likely that you're still going to be filming/editing/animating but will have an AI layer on top that produces extra effects or generates pieces of a scene. Think "green screen plus", vs fully AI entertainment.

People will over-hype this tech like they did with voice and driverless cars but don't let it scare you. Everything is possible, but it's like a person from the 1920's telling everyone the internet will be a thing. Yes it's correct, but also irrelevant at the same time. You already have AI assisted software being used in your industry. Just expect more of that and learn how to use the tools.

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I actually think it's the opposite, AI will probably be writing the stories and humans might occasionally film a few scenes. ~95% of TV shows and movies are cookie-cutter content, with cookie-cutter acting and production values, with the same hooks and the same tropes regurgitated over and over again. Heck they can't even figure out how to make new IP so they keep making reruns of the same old stuff like Star Wars, Marvel, etc, and people eat it right up. There's nothing better at figuring out how to maximize profit and hook people to watch another episode than a good algorithm.

The first thing to go away will be short content. Instagram and YouTube ads will be AÍ generated. The thing is - that’s the bread and butter of the industry

Why would I want to watch AI-generated content?

Procedurally generated games can be quite fun, if AI content gets good enough, why wouldn't you want to watch it?

Because anything that an AI can produce, no matter how "intrinsically" good, becomes trivial, tedious and with zero value (both economic and general).

That's a weird sentiment. If you can concede that it could be "intrinsically" good, then why do you care where it came from?

It reminds me of part of the book trilogy Three Body Problem, where these aliens create human culture better than humans (in the humans' own perspective, in the book) by decoding and analyzing our radio waves to then make content. It feels to me much the same here where an unknown entity creates media, and we might like it regardless of who actually made it.

Imagine you’re watching a show, it’s really funny and you’re enjoying it. You’re streaming it, but you’d probably have paid a few dollars to rent it back in the Blockbuster days. You’re then told that the show was produced by an AI. Do you suddenly lose interest because you don’t want to watch something produced by an AI? Or is your hypothesis that an AI could never produce a show that you liked to that degree?

If you mean the former, then I frankly think you’re an outlier and lots of people would have no problem with that. If you mean the latter, then I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. We’re certainly not there yet, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. I’ve definitely read stories that were produced by an AI and preferred it to a lot of fiction that was written by humans!

You may want to familiarize yourself with this thought experiment and think how a slightly modified version applies to AIs and their output: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine

As to whether I am an outlier: Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide watch Magnus Carlsen. How many have watched AlphaZero play chess when it came about and how many watch it when it ceased to be a novelty?

Totally different. Watching a display of skill, where you marvel at how much better the demonstrator is than yourself obviously has no value if the demonstrator is a machine, but then it is plainly visible that the activity has little intrinsic entertainment value and entertainment value comes from the story and personal arc of the performer. This is different from a movie where nobody really cares about the personal arc of the actor, and people are completely happy to watch an animated film where there isn't even a real actor on display.

>where nobody really cares about the personal arc of the actor

Speak for yourself. Actors do have fans, and a lot of them. Their personal lives are subjects of interest for a reason.

So, no, not totally different at all.

It'll eventually get to the point where it's high quality and the media you consume will be generated just for you based on your individual preferences, rather than a curated list of already made options made for widespread audiences.

A big part of entertainment's appeal is having an experience/frame of reference to share with other people. Personalized entertainment doesn't offer that.

I am also extremely skeptical of the ability/need so serve at individual level instead of niches (as today).

Time will tell.

The last-mile problem applies here too. GPT-3 text is convincing at a distance but when you look closely there is no coherence, no real understanding of plot or emotional dynamics or really anything. TV shows and movies are filled with plot holes and bad writing but it's not that bad.

Also I think "a good algorithm" is more than just repetitive content. The plots are reused and generic, but there's real skill involved into figuring out the next series to reuse with a generic plot which is still guaranteed not to flop because nobody actually wants to see reruns of that series or they accidentally screwed up a major plot point.

yes someone will need to hand-pick the best versions of each episode . over time a large enough dataset will have been generated that a model can be trained to the task of curation

Editors might still have a job :).

Kidding aside, these technologies are amazing, but for a while still they will need a human in the loop selecting, tweaking and editing the output and feeding it back to the contraption for the next iteration.

The question is, for how long?

AI might take an outline and write dialogue/descriptions/etc, but it's not going to be generating the story or creating the characters. They might use AI to tune what people come up with (ala "market research") but there will still be a human that can be blamed or celebrated at the creative helm.

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