Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast in which we speak with some of the brightest minds working in the media business today. I'm Andrew Wallenstein with Variety. The handwringing over what generative AI could mean for Hollywood is nothing new, certainly not since last year's strikes, but concerns have ratcheted up to a whole new level in recent weeks when Open Ai gave the world a glimpse
of its upcoming text to video tool SORA. At first, the assessments that we were witnessing the end of the entertainment industry as we know it were limited to social media, but then last week mogul Tyler Perry upped the Annie by publicly declaring SORA had prompted him to stop construction on an eight hundred million dollar expansion of his studio in Atlanta, and he beseeched Congress to say, the industry, so what's going on here? Overreaction or is it even
possible underestimation? To help me make sense of it all, I've enlisted Steven Zeitchik, who has been closely tracking the intersection of AI and entertainment at his buzzworthy Substack Mind and Iron. We will be back with him after these messages, and we are back with Steve Zeitchik, formerly of The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and other august publications, where he has written extensively about media and tech, most recently on his substack Mind and Iron, which is available
every Thursday. You can check it out at mindanron dot com. I'm also lucky to call him a close friend for more than two decades. But this is our very first podcast together, and I can think of no better subject to finally bring us together than one that some say represents the dawn of a new era in entertainment, the profound implications. So Steve, I want to hear what you have to say. No pressure, but thanks for stopping by.
Andy.
It's great to be here, as you say, after all these decades. Of course, we did meet when we were four years old, so two decades, you know, doesn't take us back that far.
Yeah, I mean, Sora.
It has been a fascinating time, obviously really starting with the release of Chat GPT all the way back in November twenty two. But the anti as you note, was incredibly upped a couple of weeks ago when open Ai release Sora.
This is the text to video.
Basically platform or program that open Ai has not yet released commercially, but they're unrolling it, probably in the notcho just in future. And essentially, what text to video means is you can put in a text input the way you can with Chat GPT for text or the Dot and Mid Journeys of the World for images.
You can do the.
Same now for video and have incredibly realistic looking with only some slight bugs. As I'm sure we'll get into video and the power of such a tool. We've heard about it for a long time. We sort of sci fi writers have kind of dreamed of it. I don't know if any of us thought we would actually see the day. Certainly did not imagine. I think many of
us did not imagine seeing it so soon. Here we are, very early in twenty twenty four, already potentially with the capability to do this, but Soras here and it's only going to be coming on stronger.
So what was it exactly that people found so mind blowing, Because, as you said, there were other applications in the marketplace already. Text to video wasn't entirely new.
Yeah, it's a good question, and I think, you know, these things are all sort of you know, a little bit of that that Fitzgerald, you know, how did you go broke gradually at first or then all at once or hemingway.
I always forget who it was, But.
That's certainly been the trajectory of AI, where it's kind of like, oh, it's very incremental, it's very slow, it's very slow, and then all of a sudden it seems to be here, and we ask how it happened so quickly. So, yes, there certainly have been some kind of video applications, I don't think nearly as smooth.
And I think one of the reasons.
This took people back, certainly for those of us with a long enough memory to go back to the earlier, earlier days of the Internet, is that, if you remember, the sort of distribution of a lot of these different forms of media really took a long time to evolve. I mean, you know, people were using email back in the early nineties. I don't think we were seeing video really distributed widely for you know, ten to fifteen years
after that. And so while on the one hand, AI of course has been in development for many decades, some of your listeners may know about Elizo, which was a kind of a text based chatbot back in the sixties. But the reality is, for most people and for most modern use cases, we really have not had any sort of widely deployed AI until just you know, a little a year ago with chat GPT and so to go from a text based you know, application to a video
based one and literally, you know, fourteen months. When you think about you know, previous uh, you know evolutions took fourteen years.
I think that's partly why people are so shocked by this.
I think there was something also about what was in market. Uh prior to Sora had just lasted clips that were about four seconds, and there was something about getting to that one minute mark that Sora that was able was able to do that. I mean that I think really woke people up to the fact that this technology was
evolving very quickly. But see, here's the thing for me, I think there's for me, I'm not so quick to presume that means that going forward, there's going to be some uninterrupted hockey stick you know, evolution up into the right. That means that, you know, by the end of the year, Sora is going to be spitting out a ninety minute movie that's going to be ready for theatrical distribution. What do you think in terms of the evolution of this stuff going forward from here?
Yeah, no, I think the length is a very big question. I mean, certainly you're right that the quantum leap we've just had is nothing short or remarkable. Whether you think this is a good thing or not. When I say remarkable, I don't mean that it's going to save humanity.
It could also be its destruction.
But certainly, in terms of the tech and the kind of form factor here, it's really remarkable that we've gone from either as you say, very short videos are really
even still images, to a full minute. But yeah, the technical challenges without sort of getting or boring anyone with the engineering or kind of processing requirements here, but the kind of capabilities needed to go from a minute to you know, let's say, I don't know, even a twenty five minute episode of television is not simply a factor of you know, twenty five where you can just stack minute long videos together. First of all, they would not, you'd have to stitch them essentially in a way that
would not work. And then even doing a lot of limited videos, I mean we know how much power even one minute takes. So I don't think we're going to see full length forget feature films, but even even you know, shorter you know, sitcom type episodes anytime soon. But I think that the future is now in the sense that it will only be a matter of time. I mean, to me, the question of the question of time is not really a significant one. You know. Again, a lot
of this is about processing power. You know, basically, how computers can handle this much data and sort of troll this much data in a short amount of time that we will get there. I'm not concerned from a technical standpoint. I don't think there's any there's any kind of hindrance there. I think the question is how good will it be
when we do get there? I mean, and I don't know if you want to get into the challenges now, but even in the one minute, we know about all the laws of physics that are being defined.
You know, the cat with the with the fifth leg.
Or the you know, or the hand key that never gets eaten, yeah, the extra hand, the person who's flying backwards. I mean, all of these are not small challenges. It's not like a case. I mean, yes, you could have humans go in and fix that, as you can with any sort of animation, but that essentially defeats the purpose of having a machine do this. I mean, you could also have a human design this whole thing in an
animation studio. So I think that will be The question in terms of the democratization is not so much when we can get to the length, because look, people will play with minute long formats.
We have TikTok videos that are ten seconds that go viral.
I'm not really and eventually we will get to the twenty five minute or ninety five minute mark. I think the question is how good will they be when we do?
But still, I want to like, just back up for a second. I'm just picturing like your mom, my mom listening to this podcast, and I just want to make sure they understand the implications because you know, they love podcasts of what we're talking about. Where you know, the way I want to explain it is, you know, the way it's always worked if you wanted to shoot a scene of something was you know, you had to have cameras and actors or at least animation, or you know,
a set or a location. And now, thanks to this software, all you need is a computer and then you, you know, you whisper some text instructions into you know, Sora's ear, and Sora simply ushers into existence. What all that equipment and all the cost and time and manpower that comes with that and every all of that is no longer necessary and that is simply revolutionary now. Soa as we currently know it, I think we've just made clear is
not ready for prime time. But it's not about where it's at now, it's about where it could be in the future. So if you are in uh, you know, a traditional Hollywood production company studio, how are you not freaking out?
Yeah? Well, for for better or worse.
Neither of us run studios that I think normally maybe for worse, although on a day like today and after the release of Soura, maybe it's a good thing we're not dealing with this problem.
But but look, you're absolutely right.
I mean, the the the transformation, the transform transformational moment we're in is is uh is striking and is I would you know you you talk about just being able to speak, and you know, our our mother is being able to speak and a video is created.
I mean, you know, think.
About what just what that's meant for distribution for so many years, where it's like, you know, it used to take you know, an engineering degree, and if that if you can even do it to send a video to basically, you know, tell your your friends that, hey, look at this cute thing my my my grandkid did, or my friend did, or my nephew did, or my child did. And now, of course, with a flick of a keystroke or a swipe of a screen, we can do that. And so essentially what we're now doing is pourting that
over to not just a distribution but the production. And I think that really dovetails right into your question about you know, where where Hollywood studios are going to take this and how worried they should be about where it's going to go. I mean, you know, and you were there covering it right at the dawn of the YouTube age, where it's like the studios are sort of like, what are we going to do that anyone can kind of upload and share videos? And how is that going to
disrupt our business? We know what Google did about it. They went out and bought YouTube and we saw eventually after Netflix and other companies kind of ate their lunch, how the legacy media outlets started to react, and I think that's a bit of a good template maybe for how to see this moment from a production standpoint. If you're a studio, which is to say, massive fears of disruption and is this going to take away our business?
And let's be real, you know the netflixes.
Of the world that the automation of the distribution or the ease of distribution did, in many ways, you know, take away a lot of their business. And I think that can and very much in some cases will happen on the production side. That said, I don't think anyone feels like Hollywood studios have gone away because of streaming. In some ways, it's been another it's been a bood for them. It's been a revenue stream. It's disrupted them
and it's and it's been their salvation. And although I don't think we quite yet know how it's going to play out, I think using that as a sort of rubric to say, look, the automation of production, much like the automation of distribution, is going to be incredibly disruptive.
It's going to create you know, years, if.
Not more, of you know, new business models, of people having to learn new skills of people losing their jobs, maybe some other people getting jobs, but ultimately, I don't think from where I sit, and I'm not you know me, I'm not usually a Pollyanna about this stuff. I don't think it's going to bring down the traditional business anymore than streaming, I e. The distribution side of this brought
down Hollywood. I think it just fundamentally transformed Hollywood, and I think we're going to get to that point as well.
Here well, enter Tyler Perry or should I say Chicken Little. What I mean by that is he gives his interview to the Hollywood Reporter in which he declares the sky is falling. You know, he makes some really really bold statements to quote, you know, just a few of them. Here's one quote, there's got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us. If not, I just don't see how we survive.
End quote.
I love the wei, by the way, as if, as if he's in the same tax bracket as the people he's trying to protect. But now, look, I mean give the guy credit for doing at least what no one else in his tax bracket seems willing to do, which is to get out there and ring the alarm in a major way. The question though, is, you know, is he being hysterical or responsible?
Yeah, and I think maybe a little bit of both. And just to go back for a second to your week question, I think both tax bracket and job responsibility I think needs to be delineated there because and even said it himself, he's like, look, as an employer, as a boss, as an executive, this is really, you know, kind of my wildest fantasy. It's like, you can automate large parts of the of the the assembly line, as it were, and if you're trying to, you know, you're
worried about costs. And even Tyler Perry has to worry about costs. Suddenly you just saved on a whole bunch of animators or certainly kind of are able to scale back a lot of what a lot of of the sort of uh kind of spade work that had to be done or grown work that had to be done by by humans. So I think from that perspective, he's probably not freaking out too much. But as he also notes, as an actor, as a uh you know.
As a as a as.
A craftsman, as a fellow, you know, employee of a lot of the people who work for him. Clearly there's there's a lot of disruption there. I mean, look, this is you know, I don't think Tyler Perry is I think he's hysterical in that, you know, the notion that you know, somehow we shouldn't be building studios or we should worry that the entire industry is just going to evaporate because uh, you know, some you know, teenager can suddenly you know, create the next media or whatever franchise
is going to resonate with people. I think that's an exaggeration. I mean, I think that, first of all, that's a long way off from happening. Even when it does happen, it'll probably be a very much a second class citizen. I mean again, you know, it is TikTok competing with with Game of Thrones or with Succession. It's not you know, maybe it's competing on the mind share front, but but clearly you know we're not We're not going to be at the point where where any of this technology can
create the next succession. I think he's being responsible in the sense we need to be, you know, kind of plotting our course well in advance of when we've been doing that. And you know, it's funny you mentioned the you know, we need regulation, we need to get get you know, kind of our duccen row here. He also said something as he was making those comments. He said, we need to not just like do this one guild or one union at a time, one strike at a time.
And I think he's absolutely right about that.
I mean, I think as much as the writers and actors strikes, I think put AI at the forefront. This sort of patchwork approach from a Hollywood industry perspective that we had over the last year, where the directors went and made their own deals, and the writers made a deal, and then the actors kind of got what they got, and then of course you've got all these other unions the below the line.
Folks. That's not really going to work.
And I would argue that not even from a labor standpoint, but from from a studio in management and produce aial standpoint, there needs to be a lot more alignment, a lot more talking and and you know, you talk about regulation, a lot more negotiation with with.
With Washington, because let's be real about this too.
You know, the sam Altmans and and Sachinidella's and and all the tech moguls they are, they are working at their hardest to make sure that from a lobbying standpoint, they have as few regulations as possible. I know there's a big lawsuit, a few big lawsuits now, including the
New York Times suing Open AI for copyright infringement. But the reality is, to the degree this is going to be negotiated in the halls of Congress tech is you know, halfway through the marathon, and you know you've got Hollywood executives still debating what sneakers to buy. I mean, so this is a this is we are incredibly behind as an industry from Hollywood standpoint, relative to where the tech industry is in terms of figuring this out regulatorially.
So in all of those regards, I think Tyler Perry is exactly right.
But I do think that in terms of the immediate fears, the immediate displacement, the idea that the quality of work can somehow start even remotely approaching what even very basic professionals do, I think we're a ways off of them.
We will be back in just a moment with more with Steve Zeichick stick around and we are back with Steve Zeichik, who writes frequently about issues regarding artificial intelligence at his sub stack Mind and Iron, which you could check out at mindan iron dot com. He puts out really good stuff every Thursday, so do check it out.
You know, Steve, you were just talking about you know, you kind of panned back and gave us the big picture in terms of the battle lines being drawn here, and it just seems like such an impossible state of affairs when you think about the regulatory picture, the guild picture, and what Tyler Perry is calling on for here in terms of this industry getting its act together and getting everyone on the same page. What hope can we really have for Hollywood to fight this battle in the right way.
Well, if streaming is in any indication, I would say zero.
You know, it's like the whole thing.
I mean, you follow out of this stuff, like whatever we did with social media on the tech side, let's do the opposite now. And I think you can make a case that that's true with streaming as well. I mean, you know, we obviously saw the legacy companies way behind, We saw black box data issues, we saw lack of
revenue sharing. I mean, creators certainly don't want to repeat any of that, And you know, I don't think it's a stretch to say we're in changer of doing that and then some So you know, I don't think the historical precedent here is terribly encouraging. And I think, as you've kind of been alluding to, in some ways, this is are In a lot of ways, this is more
transformative than streaming. You know, production and creation always going to be more fundamental to the business than distribution, though distribution is of course very important.
So I don't have a ton of hope.
The only the only sort of in that regard the glimmer I would offer listeners here and you could tell me if you think I'm being too optimistic, is that I think we have learned some lessons. I do think, you know, I talked to executives, as I'm sure to you, who kind of say, look, you know, we are not going to get caught unawares of the way we were. You know, there were so many people ten fifteen years ago who dismissed a lot of this stuff as just either you know, kind of want to be you know,
Hollywood content or a user generated stuff. You know, we're both old enough to remember the whole MySpace days and the frenzy about that and that that wasn't going to really cannibalize the business. And I think that I think Hollywood executives now and Labor Gill for that matter, are just too savvy. They know that they cannot underestimate this. Now, does that mean they're going to react to that in the right way? Are they going to align and get you know, you know, you know, can the guilds even
get on the same page. Can management and the guilds, given some of the ranker decide what's best for them? Because you know, look, as much as I think the Hollywood studios and management are in some ways, you know, Tyler Perry being an example in this regard the enemy of labor, I also think they're their best ally because because the tech companies, as we know, don't necessarily care that much about Hollywood studios, I'm preserving their business model.
They care about maximizing their profits as they should. So to the extent that this is going to be a battle between big Tech and Hollywood writ large, then hopefully producers and executives and conglomerates can get on the same page with workers and creators, because the sooner they could do that, the better they can figure out, you know, how to either neutralize the threat or work in concert with with the opportunity.
But but you know, I don't mean to.
Like sing a Kumbaya tune here, but I think the more kind of animous intention you have between Hollywood management and Hollywood labor, the more likely it is that big tech is going to come and eat both their lunches.
Yeah. I my head is spinning just listening to this. I mean, I'm still somewhat fixated on the notion that, you know, and I'm not I'm not pinning this on Tyler Perry, but you know, he's obviously calling for Congress to have the studios protect labor, and I guess obviously not fire everyone in sight and just have computers crank out all the production needs, you know, from here on in,
and because obviously that would be tremendous cost savings. But you know, when I keep my when I wrap my head around that scenario, I sort of say to myself, so if you force the studios to keep employing people, Okay, if there's some sort of protection there, how do you keep the studios competition from then utilizing the technology and then beating them at a fraction of the cost, and keeping the purveyors of that technology from you know, do
you keep them from from deploying the technology? Like, I just I don't understand how that all that could even possibly work.
You don't think Congress is in any way the answer here is your point.
I just don't know how you how you have Congress force the studios to keep people employed, even though that is the most humane solution. And I don't know how you keep the technology companies from not deploying the technology. I just don't understand how that works.
So a couple of things that they're not going to there's no way they're not going to stay the technology companies from from deploying the technology. I think what's going to happen is and this is not really a congressional issue.
This is a judicial issue.
And I'm I'm not an expert on regulation or legislation in this regard or in any regard, but my understanding from covering this a little bit is that really what can happen on that side is.
Just the toughening up of existing.
Copyright laws that they're pretty tough as it is, but they could be tougher in some respects. And then the enforcement and of course that's going to be up to the courts. And again we'll see where this New York Times lawsuit goes. But but I think inso far, and that would address kind of the second part of your question, which is what's going to stop people from just you know, grabbing it. On the one hand, so that that you know, that depends on copyright and I don't think that's a
resolved issue yet. You know, can open ai just unleash a product that lets people like you know, drop Brad pit take Brad Pitt from I don't know seven and drop them into their student film like I think that there are legal mechanisms that can prevent that's totally that convent that from getting distributed if someone does that, you know, I don't think open ai cares. I think they want
people to use this tool. I also think there could be judicial restraint or or legislative and judicial restraints put on you know, how much open ai could could actually train their models on this data to begin with?
It was interesting.
I don't know if you notice this nuance, but when sam Alwen was giving his little spiel on SOA. He was talking about how this was all kind of trained on publicly available information, and so I think they're very aware now that the initial chat GPT, which was a lot murkier in what it was grabbing, as we see from the New York Times lawsuit, they have to be a lot more careful about that. So I think that does address a little bit of what can be taken and if you do take it, you have to pay
for it. And that's of course one avenue this could all go as well, which is they do train on a lot of this data that's you know, that's copyrighted, but the studios and hopefully the artists get compensated for it.
You know.
In terms of the jobs, I'm extremely, extremely pessimistic about the kind of protectionism that I don't know if Tyler Perry is actively advocating for it, but to the degree is kind of dangling this hope that Congress is going to pass a law that keeps people employed when there's technology that can that can automate their jobs.
I mean, again, I am no labor.
Historian by any stretch, but if you look at the history of automation in this country, in the auto industry and and and other other industries. There's just not a lot of reason to think that's that's gonna work. You know, and you can go back to the typewriter, you can go to you know, to Google, to search engines.
I just don't think that's gonna work.
I think what you can have, and I don't know if this happens legislatively or if it happens, you know, within the private sector.
I think what you can have is retraining.
You can basically say we're gonna, yes, this is going to potentially some cases take your jobs, but in other cases make it easier. We're going to help you do your job better with the help of this technology, or do a different job now that technology is doing this current one. And I think there is room for that.
Now.
I don't want to get too like shiny optimist about that, because I think there's a limit to how much you can retrain someone if their jobs are now completely automated. But I think there is some there's some avenue for hope there.
Yeah, I do hope this isn't a matter of just simple displacement. But we'll have to see on that and
on the copyright question. Keep in mind, I think copyright is almost like we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, where we still need to see SORA be equipped with having some degree of creative control where filmmakers will be able to use your example, insert Brad Pit or insert you know whoever, because at this point we don't you know, you can't even add sound to SOA, although eleven Labs another software tool al owed there you could layer sound and on top of things, but you know, there's so
much that still needs to be demonstrated at this point. What I'm also wondering about at this time is I'm wondering, especially as we see one minute clips, is not even just the disruption that is going to happen in terms of we're obviously focusing on Hollywood premium long form entertainment. I'm wondering whether the TikTok and youtubes of the world have things to worry about here because these this kind of technology is also going to impact, you know, the
social video creator economy layer of the world. Because let's not forget that just because these videos can will great premium video into existence, that doesn't mean everyone is Steven Spielberg. Not everyone is gonna be able to turn this into ninety minutes or thirty minutes. But what they will be able to.
Do is.
Social video, which already has no barriers to entry. Why can't open ai become the next YouTube or the next TikTok In other words, I think the existing platforms in social video could perhaps find a new platform emerge from these new players that already power this kind of video. You see what I'm saying.
So you think that because right well, right now, Opening I mean Opening is purely a tech company. In fact, they want developers forget distribution. They don't even want to, you know, they don't know we want to be creating the apps here. But you think that either open ai or a company that's responsible for the tech by the way, Google would be would be the natural one because of course they have both the AI capabilities and you know
with YouTube the distri abution capabilities. But do you think there might be some kind of blurring of the lines between the tech that enables the creation and the distribution where those companies get into the distribution.
To me, it's a natural extension. I mean, and Google, by the way, could be right behind open ai here. They have the Lumie Air is something that is coming that supposedly is going to be very similar to Sora. I'm just saying open Ai, I think, why not open up a distribution platform and compete because you're going to have tons of video coming out as people play with this stuff. Why not get into that space as well.
It could be a whole new play. And so I just wonder whether we should be thinking even a little more broadly here in terms of what disruption could come. If I was Sam Altman, That's how I'd be thinking.
Yeah, he's not shown to date a lot of interest in and you know, you could say this is wise or not. I actually think it kind of is. He's not shown a lot of interest in being sort of front facing in that way. I think he knows there's companies with massive footholds. I think he feels like if he does his job well and if open ai is able to create or give developers the tools, really because they're not really even creating a lot of this, but
they're giving developers. I mean, so it is a different case, but they're giving developers the tools to create this stuff, then they can go out and put it on those distribution platforms. Though you know open Eye of course, as we know, as a very close relationship both spiritually and corporately with Microsoft. And you know, Microsoft clearly has a lot of reach with Windows and Office and all that, so there's certainly some some potential there.
I was curious.
There's something you said a second ago is interesting that I was hoping maybe to circle back to for a minute, Like you talk about what it can do in terms of the barriers to entry for creators. Do you think in terms of the creator economy, this is like an unabashed well, is this a good thing?
Is this a bad thing?
It's only up the level of kind of you know, professional or semi professional creators who are not you know, Hollywood types at all, your your mister beasts and and you know, your your TikTok kind of auteurs. This would seem to really just give them tools that are almost unimaginable. It levels the playing field for them, as I see it. What do you what do you think it does in terms of that world and creativity and the monetization they're up.
I think you could see it level the playing field. I think you could see a whole new a whole new group of players come in that are maybe more adept at the kind of premium entertainment that you know, maybe the mister beasts of the world are not necessarily adept at.
I don't know.
I mean, I just think that what we are talking about here in general, whether we're talking about creator economy, premium entertainment, it's so hard to get my head around the disruption that we're going to see. And I think a lot of what's gonna be disrupted, like we could barely conceive of it. That's how huge this is.
Yeah, And I think just to add to that, I mean, you talk about the whole new layer of creators who who can you know, sort of h up their game or or figure out how to master these tools in a way that maybe this current or previous generation of content creators have.
And you know, I would look at animation, I really would.
I mean, you know, animation, and this is where maybe you know, if I'm you know, Illumination or I'm Pixar or on any of these companies that have that have done this so well for so long, I'm worried because forget just the the you know, the animators on the floor, who should be rightly worried here, but you.
Know, this is going to give tools.
I mean, and I think you know, we both watched these these videos and these demos and sort of saw the remarkable animations that were being created. I think I was frankly more struck by that than uh than than
some of the live stuff. And to me, if you're able to kind of create animation up level, you know, if your your average or slightly above average content creator could now create you know, a one minute and then it gets a little bit longer, you know, gets you know these animations that you know, pix Our, Illumination, their shorts, and now suddenly there's like someone who's mastered these.
Tools and maybe as an artist in their own right, but is not.
Employed by a studio as there's no affiliation with them, is now suddenly creating Pixar or Illumination level animation.
You know, what does that do to both sides? Right?
What does that do to the Hollywood firmament where it's like, now suddenly you've got you get we can't distinguish between these studios, And what does it do to to these YouTube TikTok like platforms where suddenly it's not just you know uh, you know, somebody doing some fun karaoke video.
But I'm watching, you know, and I.
Know this is a bit of a stretch, but but not as much, not as big as it was a month ago, where I'm watching someone do the next you know.
Cocoa or cars or or minions.
It just feels to me like there are so many places here where the content creates could get this massive boost again the ones who know how to use the tools. And then you know, how does that get monetized if suddenly someone could do really high level stuff without having to go through the studios. Again, to your point, I think that's an area where the level of disruption is just mind boggling.
And it just brings me back to Tyler Perry and and it's so easy to dismiss what he is saying and the profound implications of what he's raising as hysteria. But the thing I keep coming back to is, and I think we're going to end on this note, is it's it's as if, you know, I'm typically allergic to hysteria, but in this scenario, I find that, for once, I find myself thinking hysteria is plausible, and if it's plausible, isn't it truly kind of apocalyptic? And how does disturbing is that?
I would end on this note.
From my end, the slight bit of optimism I would inject to that and maybe leave listeners with. From from my point of view is that if you love Tyler Perry and you love the media movies, or you love you Know Spielberg or James Cameron, whoever it is, the reality is is not only can these can these models not actually create that? I mean they may be able to emulate it, but they can create something that distinctive.
It's going to make those people even more prize. And I think we're gonna love if you love you know, whether it's from Tyler Perry to Steven Spielberg to Catherine Bigelow to Ava du Verne, I mean, you name it. If you love that filmmaker, you love that creator, you know, in the sea of pseudo professional content, that stuff is going to be even more valuable. There's going to be even more premium, more of a premium on people who could bring their artistry and humanity. I don't think it's
gonna touch that high level of content. In fact, it may even put more of an emphasis on it so I don't know if that tempers the apocalypse, but that's the one thing I would say on.
Score one for traditional Hollywood. Well, thanks Steve for taking the time out. You, of course, can check out everything he writes every week on his substack at Mind and Iron. Appreciate you taking the time out, great being here ready, Thanks for listening. Be sure to leave us a review at Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music. We love to hear
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