Netflix goes ‘all in’ on generative AI as entertainment industry remains divided

Because the leisure business reckons with when and how you can use generative AI in filmmaking, Netflix is leaning in. In its quarterly earnings report launched on Tuesday afternoon, Netflix wrote in its letter to buyers that it’s “very nicely positioned to successfully leverage ongoing advances in AI.”

Netflix isn’t planning to make use of generative AI because the spine of its content material however believes the know-how has potential as a device to make creatives extra environment friendly.

“It takes a terrific artist to make one thing nice,” Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos mentioned on Tuesday’s earnings name. “AI may give creatives higher instruments to boost their general TV/film expertise for our members, nevertheless it doesn’t mechanically make you a terrific storyteller when you’re not.”

Earlier this yr, Netflix mentioned it used generative AI in remaining footage for the primary time within the Argentine present “The Eternaut” to create a scene of a constructing collapsing. Since then, the filmmakers behind “Comfortable Gilmore 2” used generative AI to make characters look youthful within the movie’s opening scene, whereas the producers of “Billionaires’ Bunker” used the know-how as a pre-production device to examine wardrobe and set design.

“We’re assured that AI goes to assist us and assist our artistic companions inform tales higher, sooner, and in new methods,” Sarandos mentioned. “We’re all in on that, however we’re not chasing novelty for novelty’s sake right here.”

AI has been a contentious subject within the leisure business, as artists fear that LLM-powered instruments that non-consensually used their work as coaching knowledge have the potential to negatively impression their jobs.

With Netflix as a bellwether, evidently studios are extra seemingly to make use of generative AI for particular results fairly than to interchange the position of actors — even when an AI actor just lately induced an uproar amongst Hollywood actors, regardless of not but reserving any gigs (that we all know of). These behind-the-scenes AI makes use of nonetheless have the potential to impression visible results jobs, nonetheless.

These debates just lately escalated when ChatGPT-maker OpenAI unveiled its Sora 2 audio and video era mannequin, which was launched with out guardrails that stop customers from producing movies of some actors and historic figures. Simply this week, the Hollywood commerce group SAG-AFTRA and actor Bryan Cranston urged OpenAI to institute stronger guardrails towards deepfaking actors like Cranston himself.

When an investor requested Sarandos in regards to the impression of Sora on Netflix, he mentioned that it “begins to make sense” that content material creators could possibly be impacted, however he’s much less apprehensive in regards to the film and TV enterprise — or so he tells buyers.

“We’re not apprehensive about AI changing creativity,” he mentioned.

Netflix’s quarterly income grew 17% year-over-year to $11.5 billion, although this fell under the corporate’s forecast.