CES is the annual gathering of tech people from across the globe to discuss where technology will take us in the upcoming years. Some call it "the most influential tech conference in the world," and there's always some overlap between CES and Hollywood. 

The more we use VFX, CGI, and AI in our development and execution of films and TV shows, the more big tech becomes important to us. 

At this year's conference, Nina Schick, author and advisor on generative AI, made a very bold prediction. She said that 90 percent of content might be AI-generated by the year 2025. Yes, that's only two years away now. And yes, it's happening. 

The future of AI in Hollywood'Gemini Man'Credit: Paramount Pictures

SAG is already dealing with this technology as things like DeepFakes come to rise. We've seen them get exponentially better in the last couple of years, and now actors are rushing to protect their image and likeness as things move forward.

But giant ethical questions arise, like what happens if a movie studio owns a character you portrayed? Can they just reproduce you forever? And who gets your residuals after you've passed? 

All these ideas have to be sorted in real-time, because no one else is waiting around; they're just creating. 

We've addressed these ideas with the upcoming WGA negotiations as well. What happens when studios use AI to rewrite you, or even to read and cover screenplays? That tech is not far behind, and precautions need to be placed now to make sure proper credit and payment is executed.

For development executives, we've talked about the need to protect those entry-level reader jobs, or even the need to protect their jobs as specs analyzed by computers replace a lot of the work they might do for studios. 

There's a lot up in the air on the human side as the computer side gets more and more intelligent. 

One thing we need to be clear on is that AI is already all over Hollywood. We've been using it to de-age actors, augment lighting, and build CGI backgrounds with LED volumetric filmmaking. Another very important thing we need to accept is that AI is moving faster than the laws we have around it. 

Every union in Hollywood needs to adjust their plan of attack to make sure the technology augments can assist with the jobs human beings have, and does not replace them. 

Let us know what you think in the comments. 

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

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