Netflix's CEO on AI: Audiences "don't care" about what technology gets used
Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Among the many takeaways from last year’s SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, few things were clearer than this: Major studios would really like to do stuff with AI—or, at least, not have their ability to experiment with the tech curtailed by pesky things like artists or contracts. The reasons are fairly easy to understand: AI-generated material is fast, it doesn’t complain, and it’s cheap (if you’re not factoring in environmental costs that you, personally, are not paying right this moment). Sure, it mostly spews out garbage, but did you see the previous sentence about “fast, cheap, and non-whiny”? It’s basically win-win-win if you don’t consider yourself to be directly in the “quality art” business.
The issue these days, then, is at least partially one of optics, which is why you get occasional quotes from major studio heads and other execs like one issued by Netflix co-head Ted Sarandos today. Talking to Deadline after a recent Netflix earnings call, Sarandos floated a familiar narrative from the studios: AI is simply a “tool” that can never take over for “the beauty of the writing” or “storytelling.” You don’t have to afraid of tools, Sarandos is presumably saying, which are harmless and helpful, because apparently nobody’s ever watched the hallway sequence from Oldboy before.
Here’s Sarandos, directly: “I think that AI is going to generate a great set of creative tools, a great way for creators to tell better stories.” But, he conceded in a “flatter the artists” sort of way, connection comes from “the beauty of the writing, it’s in the chemistry of the actors. It’s in the plot, the surprise twist.” Then, though, Sarandos got a little more ominous, trying to suggest a framing wherein people don’t really care if the art they consume is generated with AI assistance or not.* “I’m not saying that audiences don’t notice all these other [AI] things. But I think they largely care about connecting with the storytelling. And I’d say they probably don’t care much about budgets, and arguably maybe not even about the technology to deliver it.”
*We do not automatically grant this premise.
Sarandos went on to draw parallels with animation, saying that, “If you look back over a hundred years of entertainment, you can see how great technology and great entertainment work hand in hand,” he said. “Animation didn’t get cheaper, it got better in the move from hand-drawn to CGI animation.* And more people work in animation today than ever in history.”
*We do not automatically grant this premise.
If you parse all the diplomatic language in Sarandos’ statement—including an assertion that some creatives themselves are eager to start toying with this stuff—the takeaway is that Netflix is going to continue screwing with AI content generation, to the extent that it will not get them yelled at, which they’re presumably estimating lands somewhere in between “We used a computer to type this” and “AI Seinfeld for eternity.” It’s clear guys like Sarandos know that there’s still a hard limit on public acceptability for using this tech to supersede the work of artists—but also that it’s a barrier they can continue to poke and prod.
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