silicon Valley adn Hollywood Clash Over AI

This is an excerpt of Sources by Alex heath, a newsletter about AI and the tech industry, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.

This week, I got an up-close look at how far apart Silicon Valley and Hollywood are on what to do about AI. It’s a huge gap.

First, at OpenAI DevDay, Sam Altman presented the new Sora app as a gift to content creators. He even suggested OpenAI was being too careful by not letting people make even more kinds of AI videos. It’s a bold claim.

“On the whole, creators, rights holders, people are very excited about the potential of this,” Altman said during a media Q&A in San Francisco on Monday. “They believe it will deepen connection. It’s kind of like a new generation of fanfiction.” He thinks it’ll be a positive thing.

The next day, I arrived at Bloomberg‘s screentime event in Los Angeles to hear how media executives, agents, and studio heads felt about the AI threat. Sora had just hit 1 million downloads in the App Store and was top of mind for everyone.It was clear the news had shaken things up.

Altogether, I came away with the impression that Hollywood’s leaders still have no idea what to do about the risk AI poses. They’re going to be steamrolled by technology that’s moving faster than they can comprehend. It’s a scary situation for them.