Will AI take over in entertainment?
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Artificial intelligence is the tech buzz of the times. In creative industries, many are grappling with the reality that AI is bound to play an increasing role in the creation of media and entertainment content. On the other hand, some AI-enabled tools support consumption of content, including personalized recommendations on streaming platforms and voice assistants to search for music and video. What is the prospect on the extent to which creators and consumers will adopt these AI-enabled tools?
AI technologies have the potential to enhance the creation of content and the media consumption experience. But because AI adoption requires trust in the machine, the jury is still out as to the extent to which creators and consumers will adopt these technologies. Yet predicting AI’s pivotal role in media and entertainment is necessary for companies to build a strategic vision, so let me take a shot at it.
AI is not new, what is new is the GPU
First, we must recognize that AI is not new and is already here to stay in many areas of the media and entertainment value chain, especially those related to text and audio that are not as computationally intensive, like text search and analysis, and the creation and recognition of voice and music. For example, 2021 was the point of no return for voice assistance, when it was reported that more than half of a consumer sample used voice assistants to help search and view films on streaming services. On music recognition, Shazam turned 20 years old in 2022, and since then the iPhone shazams and identifies at least 1 billion songs per month.
Most recently, what is novel about AI is that computationally intensive applications that require the machine to learn from massive datasets are increasingly viable thanks to technological progress. Generation and assisted creation of scripts, images, graphics (GPUs or Graphic Processing Unit were originally designed to process graphics and now they power many AI applications), and 2D/3D video leverage the latest super wave of AI technology advances.
Predicting high adoption: AI as the assistant
Based on AI applications that have prevailed, I have made a bold prediction: When AI applications effectively play the role of assistant, creators and consumers will embrace the technology until it’s significantly adopted.
Existing research on AI technology adoption can help support this prediction. Dr. George Dagliyan uncovered through his research during the Executive Doctorate of Business Administration program at Pepperdine’s Graziadio Business School, that there are both facilitators and inhibitors of AI adoption:
Facilitators of AI adoption:
- Convenience,
- Customization
- Efficiency
Inhibitors of AI adoption:
- Uncertainty
- Privacy risk
- Loss of control risk
For consumers, AI applications that disproportionally facilitate convenience, customization, and efficiency will become prevalent and second nature, such as recommender systems. Social media and streaming platforms use AI algorithms to analyze clicks and viewing habits and preferences to suggest relevant content, making search convenient and personalized, and saving consumers lots of effort and time browsing through countless options. There is a loss of privacy because the algorithms mine consumer demographics and past choices, but as the massive adoption so far shows, facilitators more than compensate for this loss.
In addition, companies can proactively reduce inhibitors, like transparency about how user data is collected, stored, and used to reduce perceptions of uncertainty and loss of control. Dagliyan states: “From the consumer’s perspective, the study revealed that AI adoption facilitators and inhibitors coexist with equal significance. Hence, companies can substantially increase adoption rates by prioritizing both facilitators and inhibitors of AI adoption.”
AI-powered tools can also bring convenience and efficiency in the creative process. For example, in 2017 I reported on innovations in AI that add efficiency and convenience to music creation, leading to what could be the first album co-composed and co-produced with AI. However, uncertainty and loss of control risks over copyright must be addressed for content creation AI assistants to be embraced. The recent agreement between the Writer’s Guild of America and the studios, whereby AI cannot be assigned copyright of AI-assisted scripts, could be an important precedent if extended across media and entertainment sectors, to eliminate any fears that content creators can lose copyright by using AI assistants.
Where the jury is still out: Content generation
Dagliyan’s AI adoption framework helps explain why there are currently intense negotiations among artists and studios. The possibility that AI could replace creative capacities by generating quality content boosts uncertainty and loss of control risk among artists and creatives. For example, AI image generators are widely available and a Japanese ad was recently created 100% by AI. And it’s not just about the extent to which AI will replace creative talent, but according to a Journal of Advertising editorial by Pepperdine Graziadio Business School marketing professor Cristel Russell and her co-authors, there are societal and policy implications related to the truthfulness and authenticity of AI-generated content..
So how will we grapple with these inhibitors to adoption, both as creators and consumers? For creatives, measures to reduce uncertainty and loss of control related to their profession are paramount. For example, for actors, negotiating rights to the use of their AI-powered digital twins will be paramount. The SAG-AFTRA negotiations with studios is expected to address this issue.
For consumers, Dagliyan’s study also uncovered that trust in a brand can enhance facilitators and dim inhibitors. This means that consumers are more likely to adopt AI-powered products and services when they trust the brand. Russell, who supervised Dagliyan’s research, states: “George’s study suggests that companies should prioritize brand reputation and invest in establishing trust with their audiences if they want to see their AI innovations thrive in the market.”
Creators and top brands in media and entertainment have the potential to leverage AI to maximize the convenience, customization of content, and efficiency for the benefit of the entertainment industry and for consumers. But only if uncertainty, privacy concerns, and fear of AI taking control are effectively addressed, will this potential materialize.
