In the third installment of Puck’s conversation series about A.I., presented by Meta, I chatted with our resident legal expert, Eriq Gardner, about the myriad ways that A.I. is impacting the entertainment industry, generating a palpable mixture of fear, curiosity, and genuine excitement. Of course, as Eriq notes, it all depends on your point of view: While A.I. has the potential to drastically reshape how business is done in Hollywood—in many ways, for the better—there are deeply felt anxieties about how it will further disrupt an industry already on tilt. The following conversation, as always, has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Baratunde Thurston: What’s jumping out to you right now regarding how A.I. is impacting the entertainment industry?
Eriq Gardner: I feel like we’re still in the phase where we’re just dipping our toes in. I think everyone is curious, a little scared, and excited—as many adjectives as you can think of. We still haven’t seen any kind of transformative commercial use for it. But what we have seen is a bunch of cool aspects that shock people and make it clear that this is our future and there’s no denying it. But everyone is still asking each other, What’s next? It’s generated so much conversation—it’s the number one topic whenever I speak to anyone in the industry—but no one is quite certain about it. They feel like they have a map that gives them a general direction, but not necessarily the G.P.S. coordinates to where everything is going.
Where are you seeing any breakdown in the “resist first” versus “embrace first” approach to A.I.?
From my standpoint, I generally think people are on the same page right now. But you’re starting to sense some fissures. You have people who’ve experimented with the use of it, and then there are people who are quite defensive and don’t want A.I. encroaching on their art. It seems that people who are less entrenched in the industry have nothing to lose, so they’re gonna try this thing out and see what happens. Whereas, for people who have a big stake in the industry—there’s a lot more to fear.
For instance, you might think that very famous actors have the opportunity to license their faces and not show up on set as much and leverage their fame, and that A.I. might help them exploit many more opportunities. But if you’re a background actor, you’re in trouble. It’s not just about the haves and have-nots. It’s also about who aligns best to what the technology is capable of doing.
How are the big Hollywood film studios approaching A.I.? What are their big questions about it?
I think they’re excited about A.I. from two standpoints. One is on the advertising front, two is on the delivery front and optimizing their distribution. As far as generative A.I., I feel like they’re somewhere in the middle and kind of reserving their rights. They see the opportunity there and are maybe starting to use it in the special effects arena to bring down costs, but they’re not jumping into the deep end by any regard, and there are certainly reasons why they’re hesitating a bit on that. But for the studios right now, I think they’re beginning to use A.I. on the commercial end; on the creative end, they’re not ruling it out, but they’re not fully on board yet.
A.I. Agents
Let’s move on to the talent agencies and management companies—what are you seeing there?
I sense a little bit of nervousness from the talent agencies with respect to A.I., but I don’t think it’s impacted them as much as other realms quite yet. They’re certainly asking a lot of questions right now and trying to kind of game out what sort of revenue opportunities might come along because of A.I., but they also see the potential threats.
Do you think they feel those threats on behalf of their clients—or on behalf of themselves, given their position between their clients and financiers, distributors, and studios?
It’s certainly impacted the relationship between them and their clients. For years, clients have relied on the sophistication of professionals to help them navigate the business. And these days, I have people texting and telling me all the time that they ask A.I. for second opinions and get something completely different from what their agents and lawyers are advising. I think clients have to start thinking about what the future may hold. There are certainly licensing opportunities, but there are also instances where it might cost clients their jobs, and we just got through some labor strife where everyone was trying to figure out at what point consent was necessary for using synthetic and digital performances. I think representatives had to think through these things pretty quickly, but I think they’re just as clueless as the rest of us.
What are you hearing from the community of folks doing law in the entertainment field right now?
A lot of curiosity. On one hand, A.I. might come for lawyers and start doing a lot of things that lawyers do, and I’m amazed that sometimes the lawyers take positions that spell their own doom. There are a lot of things that lawyers do that can probably be outsourced to the machine in a very effective way. But A.I. has also created a lot of work for them, and a lot of lawyers are just looking at the short term. They enjoy the new revenue opportunities while being tickled by some of the long-term implications, yet they’re not necessarily stopping too hard to think about the long term.
What’s your sense of where the Writers Guild stands when it comes to A.I.?
Well, the Writers Guild is certainly highly active on this front. But for all the activism I hear about it, it’s probably also the least cohesive; there are writers who are certainly using A.I. tools to help them in their work, and then there are others who are devastated by the idea that their old work is being used to train various systems. So there’s a lot of diversity of opinion. In terms of the legal sphere, it’s the writers who will probably set much of the precedent because they’re the ones who are pushing the boundaries, pushing the negotiations, pushing the legal positions in court, and making it so that we can set a path forward.
Do you have any sense of when the public will embrace human characters generated by A.I., as opposed to seeing it as a mere novelty?
Right now, we’re still at the chasm moment where you can tell it’s A.I., but the technology is going to keep getting better and better. But there’s no way a studio is going to release an A.I. blockbuster tomorrow; we’re not there just yet. We’re not even at the point where a 30-second A.I. ad is going to be received that warmly. We’re still at the stage where everyone’s dipping their toes in and thinking it’s cool, but not to the point where we can replace all human labor.
