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Why The Future of AI Storytelling Belongs to Advertisers, Not Hollywood
Hollywood execs see AI as "small" because they're focused on a $250B creator economy with brutal power laws. The real market: $800B in digital advertising where ROI-driven economics actually scale
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It is now December. Everyone is looking at streaming, Hollywood, and generative AI and asking: “Where is this all headed?” The answer depends on your level of paranoia.
True paranoia means generative AI will replace everything from actors all the way down to production crews. Tech wins, creativity loses, IP loses value, the media company is no longer necessary. Both Hollywood and the broader legacy media marketplace will become inevitably smaller. This perspective appeared in a recent Vanity Fair article on generative AI in Hollywood.
The “sober”, less paranoid perspective is that generative AI will evolve away from disrupting legacy media. Instead it is a new medium with limited capabilities. Its disruptive potential is complicated—if not impeded—by intellectual property law and model capabilities. This perspective was reflected in The Wrap’s one year update on Lionsgate’s partnership with Runway.
Right now, it is reasonable to have either perspective. If you have read my recent essays, I am not in the paranoid camp but I do see evidence of a future for media that justifies both perspectives. Generally, my only point of disagreement with the paranoid perspective is that creativity is going to be enhanced by generative AI. We will see entirely new forms of storytelling emerge with an unprecedented mix of both gaming interactivity (text-to-prompt) and traditional media (videos viewable on TV sets).
My only point of disagreement with the “sober” perspective is that generative AI is a “new medium” with limit-less capabilities for storytelling, most of which have yet to emerge.
The surprising takeaway from my meetings in LA is that whatever does emerge is not exciting to some current executives. Even the disruption in large form does not “feel” like a big opportunity. It feels small.
Why?
