The global competition between streaming wasteland and group cinema experiences, between series and individual pieces, was constantly present at the trade show in the USA and also at the German cinema fair. Just as forms of use have undergone disruptive developments in the course of digitalization, creatives also fear similar tendencies for their own work. The strike by the authors of the WGA is justified in particular by a lack of profit sharing and the dangers posed by AI. Since last Wednesday, directors have also entered the negotiations with similar demands. A strike is also an issue there. So far, the effects have only been felt by the shows directly affected. However, history has shown that, of course, a production stop is also foreseeable for series and fictional productions in general, with a corresponding time delay. A risk for all companies whose focus is on large international projects. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, numerous formats are dedicated to these topics and are being closely followed by the international press.
This year, Ensider's solution partners are once again inviting people to an industry event, the traditional Production Breakfast, during the Cannes Film Festival and the licensing market. This is where relationships are cultivated and different perspectives shared. The American Variety was recently able to report on the latest activities of the WGA authors in Chicago and New York in a LinkedIn:Live event. The community has long since shown solidarity outside of the stronghold in Los Angeles. Many are worried about the developments in artificial intelligence in creative processes such as composition, graphic design and the creation of texts. What if the technology is used to develop scripts and concepts based on existing works? How can the original creative work be remunerated and how should such a process be controlled?
The verifiability, clear assignment and control options are particularly unclear. Anyone who has already had experience with the performance of ChatGPT and similar solutions knows about the performance potential. Technically, the results are indeed astonishing. After all, there can be no talk of intelligence, i.e. real creative-cognitive abilities. The "computer" compares the entered character string, then historical results are optimally combined to return new character strings. The system does not reflect the content; only the mathematical probability of the calculated answer is adjusted using stored, learned grammar rules. If the input is in German, it is first translated into English, the answer is "calculated" and then converted back into German - if desired, from speech to text, speech to speech or text to speech.
In the medium term, the topic of AI will probably also bring about changes in the acting profession, in the areas of composition, production design and costume design. It remains to be seen whether and how this technology can be successfully countered. An intensive study of all application variants and established tools can only be recommended.
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(Image: IFP Entertainment GmbH)