Tyler Perry has decided to halt the planned $800 million expansion of his Atlanta studio, citing concerns over the rapid advancements in AI, particularly OpenAI’s text-to-video tool Sora. This decision reflects his apprehension about the potential impact of AI on the film industry, including the risk of job losses across various sectors, from actors to technical crews.
Despite recognizing the utility of AI in filmmaking, such as aging himself in post-production and the possibility of creating sets through text, Perry emphasizes the need for regulations to protect jobs and maintain human involvement in the creative process. His concerns extend beyond the film industry, urging a comprehensive approach involving the entertainment industry, government, and other stakeholders to address the challenges posed by AI advancements.
OpenAI’s Sora has sparked discussions about the realism of AI-generated videos and their potential to contribute to misinformation and disinformation. While Sora is only in its beta test phase, it’s clear that we are extremely close (months to a few years) away from AI-based applications that will enable users to simply describe the video they want to see and get usable results.
I’m calling this “social production.” Whatever you think social media did to media, that’s what social production will do to production. People with absolutely no training in audio/video production will simply describe what they want to see and hear. AI will do the rest.
Tyler Perry is right: the leap from professional production to social production will profoundly impact professional production companies. Consumer tastes will change, distribution will adapt, etc. Pausing this expansion is prescient because B2B AI tools (professional production tools enhanced by AI) are being incorporated into every workflow and process so quickly that it’s impossible to think that existing movie or video production methodologies won’t be radically changed over the next few years.
Please note that I’m talking about movie and video production, not film and TV production; if you think of this story in the context of F/TV, you are looking at the future through a lens from the past.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.