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The latest freak out about AI coming to kill the creative class involves a startup called Fable Studio. While you may recall them from the South Park clone they made using AI last year, now they’re back with a platform to allow anyone to do the same basic thing called Showrunner. This will mark the 50th or so time that technology has destroyed Hollywood.

Look, we all get why the creative community is worried about this — the crushing of creativity, in ad form, if you prefer – to the point where they prolonged a strike to ensure more protections in this general realm. But my guess would be that this is all not only overblown, but that such technology will end up helping the industry in ways that seem impossible now but will be beyond obvious in hindsight. See also: the history of technology in Hollywood.

To me, right now, this Showrunner example is most comparable to two things: YouTube and fan fiction. YouTube has not yet killed Hollywood, despite some early concerns there, both around piracy and the democratization of video tools. And fan fiction, propelled to new heights by Amazon’s Kindle platform, has yet to kill “regular” books. In fact, in both cases, I believe the mere existence of such things actually elevated that which it was accused of murdering.

That’s harder to see with Hollywood because the industry as a whole remains challenged as they insist on hanging on to a legacy model for distribution (movie theaters) which can actually work better than it ever has for certain types of content but needs to be completely re-worked as the lynchpin of the industry.

And in a way that has little to do with technology, YouTube has hurt this model because it has eaten into the time when people might otherwise have gone to see movies in a theater. But if it wasn’t YouTube, it was going to be Facebook, then Instagram, then Snap, then TikTok, and so on. Something was always going to eat into this model. It existed because there was no means of direct distribution to people’s homes in the early 20th century. Now there is.

And yet there’s a reason why YouTube/Vine/TikTok stars “graduate” to other mediums. Part of it is legacy, sure. But part of it is simply about distribution diversification. Hit shows should “graduate” to movie theaters. This has worked from Star Trek all the way to Downton Abbey, now it’s about to work again for Peaky Blinders. The same is true with the UGC platforms. Many “graduate” to television or movies (or other forms of entertainment). And such “graduation” just validates the legacy standards.

Fan fiction is more straightforward since it obviously elevates the work on which it is based. And, of course, wouldn’t exist without that work. So when the Fable Studio folks talk about ending an episode of your favorite show and then asking Showrunner to create a new one, it’s more or less the same situation. Yes, it has the potential to become different if the AI is good enough to create art that is indistinguishable from its inspiration. But there are already laws around that for commercial purposes. And even that still doesn’t destroy the value of the original.

So I suppose the other larger fear is that something like Showrunner allows someone to create fully original content that is excellent without having to use any “traditional” talent. Not only actors (or their voices), but directors, producers, people on set, etc. While unlikely to happen any time soon, that too would still likely be a good thing for industry. Because again, any content created this way which is "good enough" would likely “graduate” up the system, where the “normal” industry folks would usher it along. It might also create new IP potential with which “traditional” talent can utilize in more “traditional” ways. And fans of that new content might also then “graduate” into the “traditional” system. That is to say, what if this type of entertainment actually expands the pie?

Sadly, no one seems ready to hear that yet. Over the coming weeks, months, and years, we're going to hear a lot more FUD around the coming AI revolution. But a lot of it is simply a convenient excuse for an industry desperately in need of change on several fronts, which results and consolidation are proving above all else.

Certainly, some if not all of the tools used in these blasphemous creations will be adapted and adopted to be used to create the anointed kind too. Just as always happens. It’s not, “here comes AI, everyone is fired” it’s more like “here comes AI, how can we use it?” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos put this well and succinctly in a recent NYT interview:

A.I. is not going to take your job. The person who uses A.I. well might take your job.

Yes, there will be some jobs which will change more than others as a result in the extreme version of all of this. Some may fade with time. But there will be time to smooth out such a transition. I know it feels like there won’t be in our era of AI chaos. But things will settle and slow down, eventually.

And as that happens, and as various bits of AI goes from feared to adopted, we’ll likely start to see something funny as a result: human art will be elevated even further. I don’t mean by using the AI tools (though that will undoubtedly come into play too, per above), but I mean that human creations versus automated or AI ones, will garner a larger premium and be held up in even higher regard.

Humans are not going to stop caring about works of art made by other humans just because we have works of art made by machines. Again, I think it’s more likely that they’ll care about such work more in such a world. Human value won’t be driven to zero, human creativity will be prized even more and sought out.