What's left for us when AI makes our films?

Since the AI discussions really began, back when I started playing with Dall-E and Midjourney and then ChatGPT to see what I was dealing with and how things were advancing, I have imagined what I consider to be the inevitable future of entertainment. And it's not necessarily good news. It is a future where people at the higher end of the production and commissioning processes can replace the people at the lower end with AI, only to find that they too are then replaced. Where one by one, every process gets removed and most of what we now consider the industry simply doesn't exist.

We won't create, write, produce and distribute shows and films. They don't really exist either, not as we know them now.

Instead, a person sits down in front of their television, opens up their creation app and asks for what they want. “Give me a romantic comedy set in space about a rebellious boy and a dropout girl. I want it to look like they'll break up but give me a happy ending. Set jokes to 40%. And I'll pay $5 for an Iron Man cameo”. The app will generate the film in real time, watching responses to give the viewer what they want.

It can happen. Any limitations that exist right now won't exist for long.

So what about us? What about human stories? Can AI do it as well as we can? I'd love to say no but, with time and a bit more progress, who knows.

Is that it then? We're all screwed?

I don't think so. I hope not, anyway. See, AI might be able to give people what they want. But here's a thing about storytelling across the ages: I don't think the most important stories or even just the most entertaining stories give people what they want. It's an age-old view but I subscribe to it – when it comes to film and television and most storytelling, we don't really know what we want until we see it. Most of the time, we don't even want what we think we want because there is no surprise in being served up the very thing we asked for. A good story relies on the question of “what happens next?!” It requires us not knowing. It requires surprises. 

What we say we want is based on everything we've already experienced, which limits that request. Just like AI is currently limited by its own bank of knowledge. 

The greatest stories hit unexpectedly. We didn't know we wanted it. We didn't know what we were getting. And now we're seeing or hearing something that expands our experience, not just echoes the experiences we've seen time and time again. 

It's like when you taste something for the first time. You could not possibly know to ask for that taste in advance.

And it's why, every time there is a huge runaway success, everyone tries to copy it to be the next one, missing that the main reason it hit was in part because it wasn't the next anything. It was different.

So maybe in a world of media creation apps where it can feed every whim, our role as storytellers will be to create and produce those difficult stories. The stories people don't know they want. The unexpected stories that nobody would request but they need to experience to fall in love with them. 

Maybe that's our role. That might not be so bad.