1. What ‘Adult’ Content Can Teach Us About The Future Of AI
Porn has long been the canary in the coal mine for any new technology.
Gutenberg had no sooner invented the printing press than it was put to use pumping out bawdy pamphlets.
How did Hollywood know that VHS had become a thing? Because porn producers were transferring all their films onto tapes long before any of the major studios considered doing so.
Streaming video? Porn was there first too—in the early days, it accounted for between one-third and one-half of all traffic. Even today, five of the world’s 50 most-visited websites are porn sites.
So it should come as no surprise that porn is at the forefront of the AI-generated content revolution and that even mainstream sites like Grok and ChatGPT are about to allow for “adult” content.
“Adult" being the 21st century version of “bawdy.”
Why It Matters
Given that history, it’s worth it to look into how the porn industry is currently using AI, as it’s a good window into how everyone else will soon be using it too.
Right now, there are already a lot of use cases, and they take on multiple forms.
There’s a lot of what you would expect: sites that create “porn on demand”—type in your fantasy and they’ll spit out a fairly realistic-looking video.
There’s interactive porn—characters that will do what you ask them to do, either on demand or as part of a role play experience. (These can range from mild to wild.)
What’s interesting about these scenarios is that, as per several studies, when people know that the actors are AI models, they find the video much less arousing.
This tracks with other media types: people find music, art and fiction less interesting when they learn it’s created by AI rather than humans.
The question though is whether this reaction is innate or just an initial response to the notion of something being created by machines.
That’s the piece we need to pay attention to.
Is there some spark in content created by humans that is missing in content created by machines?
And how much less are we moved by it? (“Moved” doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.)
Ten percent less? Twenty? Fifty?
Does it matter if it’s a script for one of the dozens of TV real estate shows or a free verse poem?
Will that change as AI gets more sophisticated and more difficult to detect? Or will we always know?
Those are in many ways philosophical questions, things we’ll have a better perspective on in years to come.
In the interim period though, there are lessons to be learned from porn: Porn actors, for instance, have been licensing their likenesses to companies that will create videos using those likenesses.
There’s a straight line from that to Disney’s decision this week to allow Sora to license a number of its well-known animated characters so that fans can use them to create their own AI videos.
Not that the porn actors influenced Iger’s decision, mind you, or that there’s a one-to-one comparison between Sora and make-your-own porn, but rather, it’s a sign that porn is still often a few steps ahead in terms of adoption, and if you want to skate to where the puck is headed, it’s worth paying attention to what the X-rated part of the industry is up to.
What You Need To Do About It
If you are interested in keeping on top of what’s next, in addition to reading TVREV, you should keep your eye on what is going on with the porn industry and its adoption of AI.
You do not actually have to visit these sites. (No judgment though.) There are many well-researched articles, like this one in The Economist, that will do the work for you.
Consider whether or not AI video will ever get to a point where we won’t be able to tell that it was not created by humans.
And if, in the words of the director Maria Schrader, speaking at the MediaTech Hub conference in Potsdam this fall, “AI is still the pencil in the filmmaker’s hand, or have we created a hand that can wield the pencil itself?”
Let’s hope it remains the former.
2. Are Movies Really Dead?
Predictions about the impending death of the film industry have been building steam since the pandemic. Jerry Seinfeld famously told GQ last year that, “Film doesn’t occupy the pinnacle in the social, cultural hierarchy that it did for most of our lives.”
But the fallout from the ongoing Warner Bros-Netflix-Paramount saga may be the surest sign yet that while theatrical release movies may not be dead yet, the doctors are very concerned and the Death of the Monoculture may have claimed its latest victim.
Why It Matters
It is conventional wisdom in Hollywood that a Paramount victory would be a good thing for the movie industry, in that Ellison The Younger seems committed to the current structure of releasing films in theaters and allowing them to build an audience before bringing them onto streaming.
Whereas Netflix will begrudgingly allow a handful of theatrical showings of its films before loading them on to the mothership, and only then to ensure they are eligible for the Oscars and other nominations.
To Seinfeld and similar observers, Sarandos and team have a point and the era of the big theatrical release is behind us.
The mechanics of the movie industry have always resembled a crap shoot: spend tens of millions of dollars on a production that will last for months, if not years. Outsource the distribution of that production to a third-party who will take a sizeable cut. Pray that the movie “opens big” or builds an audience through word-of-mouth if it doesn’t. Pray that a handful of influential critics share your vision. Pray that the marketing campaign works.
All for a two to three hour piece of content.
Now in days of yore, this was all worth it because movies did indeed become cultural touchpoints, seen by most people worldwide, with lines and themes that resonated deep into the collective consciousness and became symbols for their era.
Meaning those of you of a certain age can recall the impact of Star Wars, ET, Forrest Gump and Titanic. And the amount of money that could be generated from hits like these seemed to make the gamble worth it.
Whereas today that same amount of time, money and effort seems better spent creating an 8 to 10 episode series, something that’s more evergreen and doesn’t rely on opening box office.
It wasn’t just the movies themselves that were important. Movie theaters played a big role in our lives too, one of the most democratic forms of entertainment, where people from all walks of life could afford the price of a ticket and be swept away by a story, together, if only for a few hours.
That began to change in the late 00s, as big screen TVs and home theaters became a thing.
Back in the day there was little upside to watching a movie on a 32-inch cathode ray TV screen.
But as bigger flat screens with 16:9 dimensions and high definition video came on the market, the trade off was less obvious.
Then the pandemic happened and even people who may have resisted watching at home began to see the light.
When it was over, there were far fewer theaters, especially smaller, local theaters. People began to notice the bad behavior of their fellow moviegoers more: the talking, the cellphone use, the littering.
And as the monoculture collapsed into the Feudal Media ecosystem, the notion of everyone watching the same thing at the same time began to feel somewhat quaint, a relic from a bygone era.
Hollywood compounded this by focusing on profits, which often meant movies based on comic book heroes whose broad and uncomplicated themes of good vs evil were easily grasped by overseas audiences.
The box office was good, but large chunks of the audience began to feel excluded.
A feeling that was only compounded by the sense that the films nominated by the Oscars frequently felt small and inconsequential, something duly noted by various cultural critics.
And so traditional theater-based movie viewing, arguably the very first medium of the monoculture, now seems doomed to become its latest casualty.
What You Need To Do About It
The key words of the last sentence are “theater-based.”
Because movies themselves will still have value, especially for streaming services.
It will just be a very different kind of value.
They will be a way to keep subscribers who are looking for a more compact storytelling arc.
Or a shared experience.
Just one that is shared by far fewer people than in movie theater days.
The economics may mean there are fewer blockbusters and more character-driven movies.
Though AI-driven special effects could turn that around too.
Meaning that if you are in the industry, you need to understand when it makes sense—from both a business and from an artistic perspective—to make a two hour movie versus a ten hour miniseries.
And to accept that today’s movies are unlikely to ever have the cultural impact of a Jaws or a Rocky.
And to be okay with that because we are living in a very different media era.
Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at the consulting firm TV[R]EV. He is the author of the best-selling industry primer, Over The Top: How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk frequently speaks about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.
Week in Review is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.