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Comment by adam_arthur | Hacker News Reader

Yes, they and others certainly will.

Generative AI will bring about widespread deflation in the cost of entertainment… which will be great for society. Can’t really put the genie back in the bottle once it’s out.

Why even pay licensing fees to existing actors? Just create your own personas to repackage. Of course there’s some value in the immediate term to using recognizable likenesses, but not likely to be a longer lived trend.

We can look back 10, 20, 100 years and easily recognize the huge benefits technology has brought to society, and still whenever something new gets created there are people that will fight it tooth and nail over very shortsighted concerns.

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> Generative AI will bring about widespread deflation in the cost of entertainment… which will be great for society.

Really, that's what we need, cheaper entertainment? You can already be entertained effectively infinitely at zero marginal cost with YouTube or a streaming service that costs $10/month. Most of us already probably spend more time on such entertainment than is beneficial for us. I don't see how cheaper entertainment will be of any use to anyone.

It won't just be cheaper entertainment. It'll be cheaper "literally every video content that includes humans".

I suspect this will result in an increased production value or quality of the lower tiers the same way that cheap camera/mic hardware and good/cheap software upped the production value of your average hobbyist tier youtube channel.

The only deflation will occur for the producers and corporate owners. You, me, and everyone else will pay the same prices while 95% of these who went into making movies will be unemployed.

Look up what a “competitive market” is, and the implications on cost to the consumer.

To be more direct, if content is cheap for everyone to produce, then they will have to compete on price to get consumers to engage with their content. This is obvious from both historical record and first principles.

Look at margins in any mature industry with high levels of competition.

Its also clear from history that unemployment created by technology gets absorbed into other types of roles. How can the US have close to an all time low unemployment rate after the industrial revolution obviated so many factory jobs?

People who fight technology have no understanding of history. Some lose, most win

>> Look up what a “competitive market” is, and the implications on cost to the consumer.

I'll pass since I have more important things to do.

I've worked with the industry (entertainment that is) and it is graft covered in glitz. Trust me, the major studios including Netflix all collude with one another. They'll use AI to drive down their costs while slowly creeping up their streaming fees.

Deflation for me and not for thee is the name of the game, especially when it comes to AI.

Yup, absolutely. Have worked in Hollywood and can corroborate largely the same.

adam_arthur is living in a just-world Liberian dream world where markets are free and fair. They never are.

The content may be "cheap for everyone to produce', but is it good for everyone to produce?

I wonder if it will extend to generating off-screen content like interviews and paparazzi photos.

I think you're right though, it will happen. Probably in some cheap corner where it makes economic sense, then to the bigger roles. Perhaps you don't want to manage thousands of extras for battle scenes, paying them and feeding them. Just generate them. Then eventually you also end up doing away with minor speaking roles, then the big ones.

The plot can also be generated. If you like fantasy, the AI can generate a new world for you with its own lore.

Yeah, all kinds of applications.

Fully generated and high quality voice acting for games. Likely much more realism and ease to open world generation, without using traditional procedural generation techniques or hand creating everything.

Extras in movies and TV shows adding realism on a low budget. Voice overs of all kind.

Virtual friends who give you attention without asking for anything in return. Human like AI to play games with.

Content is the most important and impactful thing in the average person’s life as it relates to leisure. The impact of mass deflation and an explosion in both quality and quantity of content shouldn’t be underestimated.

Much of society’s problems can be solved by raising standards of living and giving people the means to live a more enjoyable life on less money.

> Virtual friends who give you attention without asking for anything in return. Human like AI to play games with.

Uh, seriously? You actually want this?

Who said I need virtual friends? Many people do, however.

I have concerns about how technology is affecting our entertainment right now.

Forget the future, I'm talking about the Netflix/YouTube, etc. Obviously it's not all bad, there's amazing stuff out there.

But the professionally produced stuff? I don't want my entertainment produced from focus grouping and number crunching. I want entertainment that challenges me and makes me think, shows me something I haven't seen or felt before. The machine ain't solving for that.

> deflation in the cost of entertainment

Or will it lead to an increase in the quality of the results?

Anyone can make a very funny homemade movie on a shoestring budget in their backyard... But those aren't the movies that earn all the profits.

Entertainment is a battle for attention, and whoever spends most tends to win most attention. And the amount you can spend depends on your expected revenue, which in turn is some chunk of everyone's entertainment budgets.

So... If you invent a clever way to make movies cheaper... It won't make movies cheaper to make - it will just make the resulting films more elaborate.

The two are effectively the same. If you produce a more valuable good with the same or fewer inputs, thats deflationary in real terms.

There will always be content across the quality spectrum. Look at the hundreds of videos of Presidents playing video games or harry potter by balenciaga on youtube. These would never exist at this scale without generative AI due to level of effort required to create them versus ability to monetize the result.

Suddenly many types of content are able to be created in a rapid and cost efficient way that weren’t previously possible. Greater supply of content versus roughly neutral demand leads to lower prices (on average)

> Just create your own personas to repackage.

This is a good point to reference the Al Pacino movie S1m0ne (2002). (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0258153/)

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