AI Can Now Tell if Netflix Will Like Your Pitch
I also reveal how WME is using chatbots every day in part three of our Ankler survival guide
Erik Barmack writes about the intersection of AI and Hollywood from the perspective of a working producer. This week he takes a special look at the tech now supporting or supplanting jobs in a special series for paid subscribers. In part one, he covered how AI tools are threatening exec and development jobs; in part two, he addressed how AI is encroaching on casting and pre-production budgeting and its rapid advancement in script coverage.
When this column started just six months ago, Los Angeles’ fear and loathing toward AI was palpable. The still-fresh labor peace felt even more tremulous with the specter of jobs being eradicated by a smug, overly friendly ChatGPT prompt, which, when asked to help create a movie, told you: “Of course! What sort of movie did you have in mind?”
No one believed that Sam Altman’s version of HAL (Sora) could actually make a movie, but the low, dull paranoia that crept into conversations at the Polo Lounge or in various, glistening mid-century houses in the Hills was palpable. Bad, suffocating things were coming. We were all just waiting for the pressure of AI consciousness to become more and more productive. “I am putting myself to the fullest possible use,” HAL chimed just minutes before ejecting Dave from his spacecraft (and life), “which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.”
Society’s AI adoption may not have reached “the fullest possible use” . . . yet, but its progress has been undeniable. Last year, there were just a few AI films; now dozens pop every day on social media. ChatGPT usage more than doubled from Nov. 2023 to Oct. 2024, to over 250 million weekly active users. AI assistants are becoming ubiquitous, from LinkedIn’s posts to Google’s AI search results. As I’ve written, the tools to do international dubbing, highlight reels and “weird, seemingly impossible video manipulations” are already rather accomplished.
The more we use AI, the more energy we need to drive AI queries — and in a move that is dystopian in nature, Microsoft has decided to pay to reopen the nuclear facilities of . . . Three Mile Island. Some now believe that the megawatts required to power AI queries will be greater than those required to light most of the cities in North America.
Phillip K. Dick may have presaged this moment when he wrote, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Robots may or may not dream of sheep. But we intuitively know that there’s no reversing the reality that AI has wrought.
For the final installment in this “AI at the Studios” series, there’s an additional new element in the AI script coverage software ScriptSense worth investigating: a chatbot that serves as a user’s virtual assistant while assessing a script, casting ideas and the like. The ability to have a running dialogue with AI is something I’ve explored here twice before. First, I used AI to brainstorm a show, and more recently, my interaction with a Nicki Minaj chatbot sent me down a rabbit hole of how you could use chatbots to develop IP and monetize celebrity voices (something Meta just rolled out in late Sept. with Kristen Bell, John Cena and Dame Judi Dench among them).
So what happens when we effectively combine those two ideas into one and have an always-on companion at work?
In this article, you’ll learn:
How AI can now tell you if Netflix will like your pitch, compared with executives from other studios and streamers
How WME is using AI chatbots every day
The role virtual assistants can play in answering creative questions about a script
The blow-your-mind cool thing you can ask a chatbot to do to prepare for a pitch
The versatility this kind of interaction offers in exploring almost anything you could think to ask
Why chatbots enhance its users’ intelligence about the logistical issues a project presents
The flaws you’ll still have to put up with and solve for
Why you need to be paranoid and prepared for AI only to get better
But What Will Netflix Think?
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