While Hollywood creatives strike, studios seek AI specialists for exec ranks

The Future. Hollywood studios are searching for new executives to usher their businesses into the brave new world of AI. It was an inevitability that writers and actors saw coming, with their concerns about AI undermining copyright, limiting compensation, and replacing jobs seeming one step closer. But with the tech also unlocking incredible possibilities for creativity, Pandora’s Box may already be open… highlighting that Hollywood’s best path forward may be crafting rules that honor values like consent, control, and compensation.

Robot recruitment
Bob Iger was right when he said generative AI is something that Disney will embrace. It looks like all of Hollywood plans to with these new job postings.

• The Mouse House has a half dozen positions open in divisions like Imagineering and Streaming Advanced Research to “work on advanced personalization efforts involving digital avatars.”
• Netflix will pay up to $900,000 for an AI product manager, stating “our business is driven by Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence.”
• Sony’s AI America division has an AI ethics engineer who will work alongside gaming, entertainment, and music teams.
• Amazon has an open role for a senior project manager for Prime Video that wants to “define the next big thing in localizing content [and] enhancing content.” 

The fact that the tech is in its infancy is exactly what tantalizes studios (and worries writers and actors), which have been reluctant to accept any hard and fast rules for regulating its use in the ongoing contract negotiations.

If there are efficiencies to unlock and money to be saved, the studios don’t want to find themselves handcuffed.