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

Because the leisure trade reckons with when and use generative AI in filmmaking, Netflix is leaning in. In its quarterly earnings report launched on Tuesday afternoon, Netflix wrote in its letter to investors 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 expertise has potential as a instrument to make creatives extra environment friendly.

“It takes an incredible artist to make one thing nice,” Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos mentioned on Tuesday’s earnings name. “AI can provide creatives higher instruments to boost their general TV/film expertise for our members, however it doesn’t routinely make you an incredible storyteller if you happen to’re not.”

Earlier this 12 months, 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 “Joyful Gilmore 2” used generative AI to make characters look youthful within the movie’s opening scene, whereas the producers of “Billionaires’ Bunker” used the expertise as a pre-production instrument to examine wardrobe and set design.

“We’re assured that AI goes to assist us and assist our inventive companions inform tales higher, quicker, 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 topic within the leisure trade, as artists fear that LLM-powered instruments that non-consensually used their work as coaching knowledge have the potential to negatively influence their jobs.

With Netflix as a bellwether, plainly studios are extra doubtless to make use of generative AI for particular results quite than to switch the function of actors — even when an AI actor lately brought on 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 influence visible results jobs, nonetheless.

These debates 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 influence 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 nervous in regards to the film and TV enterprise — or so he tells traders.

“We’re not nervous 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.