True Crime Docs' Terrifying AI Future
True Crime Docs' Terrifying AI Future
It is one of the genres most susceptible, even as integrity, quality and art take a backseat
When I decided to work on this column, I knew that ethical issues would come up. Hollywood is increasingly using AI across all parts of production and it seems unavoidable that AI applications could disrupt the labor market in a way that’s uncomfortable and potentially dangerous.
While my first column was designed to show how AI could do the boring, rote work and free humans up for more creative tasks, it got some feedback that was a wee bit strong.
From a tweet:
“I’ll be constructive: you should eat a bunch of raw chicken that’s been sitting out all day.”
I want to be clear: I don’t particularly want to eat raw chicken, but more saliently, I don’t believe that AI should take over Hollywood or anyone’s job. But, indisputably, AI is a tool that will be used in Hollywood — is being used in Hollywood (often in secret) — and I’m hopeful that this column can serve as a forum to better understand its implications, even if you’re diametrically opposed to implementing AI in your productions. (I believe that Hollywood cannot respond to AI the same way Detroit responded to automation in the 1960s, or the arrival of more fuel-efficient Japanese cars during the 1970s and 1980s.)
This week I want to address a genre where many people believe AI could disrupt how this content is made, and in this instance I’m inclined towards concluding that AI is not as capable as the hype would suggest (but won’t stop people from trying, I feel confident of that).
The genre has everything — a story with a built-in audience, celebrity and most importantly is dirt-cheap to make. It just happens to be the hottest genre in streaming right now: True crime. True crime is exploding everywhere, from the super prestige docs like HBO’s The Jinx - Part Two all the way to YouTube videos on low budgets with relatively massive audiences that benefit from its popularity.
Because true-crime docs are telling a story that already happened, the story is often widely covered, meaning that in some cases the bulk of the doc can be made with archival footage — which make it a prime candidate for AI. This is evidenced by how low the barrier to entry is in this genre; the easier (or more rote) it is for humans to do, the easier AI can take it over.
So yes, with minimal human involvement, in just a couple days someone can make their own documentary just with AI. Don’t get me wrong. At this stage, it will definitely be closer to the YouTubers than to a prestige Sundance doc, but it is possible. In this article, I’ll show what is happening under Hollywood’s nose, the dangers this presents, but also some tools that could actually help real documentarians (carefully) assemble their work.
In this article, you’ll learn:
How shockingly easy it is to make an AI documentary short
Where an AI chatbot excels and fails in scriptwriting
The text-to-audio platform amateur documentarians are using
Why AI stock video lags AI text and audio
What an AI documentary actually looks like
“Hallucinations” and the ethical issues with using AI for documentary
The unsettled law around AI
What’s being done today to curb AI use
The very limited use cases for AI in documentary filmmaking
What all this means for the industry
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