“Unlocking the Secrets of Interactive Storytelling: Gavin Michael Booth Reveals How to Captivate Audiences in Episode 533 of SYS Podcast!”
Ashley
Gotcha. So, I’d love to get your thoughts just on AI in general. It’s just someone who’s doing innovative, independent film. Just what are your thoughts on AI? Where do you think that’s going? And how do you think that’s going to impact the entertainment industry?
Gavin Michael Booth
I am an eternal optimist and I have to be an optimist to be in this career. There’s no way to do it otherwise. But I am incredibly pessimistic about AI and AI and art. Because not that I don’t, I think the tools are amazing and I think what they’re allowing, there’s great scenarios for a creator in the middle of nowhere that doesn’t have the money to join the industry. It’s going to allow anyone to create on a grander scale and I recognize that. But I already see the job erosion starting with voice acting and with foreign dubbing for movies. There’s a case with a Stallone movie that just used a bunch of AI instead of hiring actors in the foreign markets. But that also means the studio engineer, the dialogue editor, the studio rental, all of that will go away. I think it’s going to impact commercial work a lot sooner than the narrative film and TV. I don’t think human made film and TV and music will ever go away fully, but kind of like what happened to live theater when TV and film came in, it was diminished greatly. And I fear that AI will be able to make all of the content, the stuff that we don’t consider art very soon within five or 10 years. Like I’m talking about generative AI, I already see it in Adobe Premiere. There’s already AI features that I see just built into the latest version. Extend your clip two seconds if your clip was too short. And you’re like, wow, that’s an amazing tool, but I’m training that so that next year’s version will just be able to make the entire clip that I don’t have to hire a crew and go out and film. And oh, wow, I film next to a highway and I can use AI to remove the highway. I don’t have to ADR this anymore. Think of how much money we get. Oh, we just put the whole ADR business out of business and the ADR rerecording studios and the actors who get paid and paid residuals on their ADR sessions. I think there’s going to be a job loss and erosion in a way that we haven’t seen. You know, there’s a lot of cutbacks already. Streaming is sort of decimated the traditional system. I saw during both the writers strike and the actors strike that the studios really didn’t want to budge on on AI protections for people. I would believe that all of those studios companies have an AI lab somewhere buried in the basement where they’re trying to quickly figure out how to get rid of writers. You’re already starting to see, don’t get don’t get notes from a human and coverage for your script. Use our AI software. Here’s our AI table read software. And you’re like, and some of it you’re like, this is great. I can. And you’re like, oh, but I’m just every time I use it, I’m replacing the need for a human. Well, at the same time, training it to just get better and better and better. And we saw Coca-Cola make a commercial at Christmas time that was fully AI generated, you know, in the arts community and amongst my friends on social media. So you’re like, this looks like garbage, but the average family in Ohio or kids in, you know, England aren’t watching TV and be like, you know what, I’m not going to buy Coca-Cola anymore because they’re taking money out of artists pockets. And it’s just it’s just here. And, you know, it’s a fine-tooth comb. I’m really trying to not use it in any sense, but I also feel like I’ll probably be left behind for whatever period artists are still in charge of the AI. But I think the end game in 15 years, maybe sooner, you’ll just come home from work and your little AI Apple TV box or whatever will have just generated new songs and new shows and new movies and new content for you. The AI influencers that are already coming out, you know, like selling products and things that’s, you know, most of it looks a little janky and it’s not quite there. But, you know, this is the Steamboat Willie era of AI. Yeah. Unlike Steamboat Willie, where humans had to learn to draw better and do photography better and change the way we do multi-layered plates that Disney invented and eventually gets to CGI and from Toy Story 1 to Toy Story 4, the difference. This is I feel like every three months there’s something else popping up on YouTube or Instagram where it’s like, look how much better generative AI is already. Look how much better audio for AI is. I don’t I don’t feel it’s going to do us any good. And I think at some point we have to ask the question of why do we want this other than cost savings? Why do we want to decimate an industry that so many people have been able to make a living at for so long and entertain and tell stories? And I think there will just be let’s say AI makes 50 percent of the content. And that’s 100 percent of the workforce in entertainment vying for 50 percent of the jobs. And there’s just no scenario that I can see where it increases jobs or adds to the system in a way that benefits all of us.
