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Generative AI is a "Plagiarism Machine"
Plus: Requiem for the Netflix DVD Queue
Steve
September 09, 2023
Buckle up, Hollywood tech nerds!
In this week’s post:
🤖 Generative AI is a “Plagiarism Machine”
📬️ A requiem for the Netflix DVD Queue
🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for
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Generative AI is a “Plagiarism Machine”
“Large language model AI, generative AI is perhaps better described as a plagiarism machine.”
The juxtaposition of that quote under an AI-generated image is not lost on your friend Steve!
David Slack is a TV writer (Person of Interest, Teen Titans, Law & Order) and former WGA-W board member. On journalist Ed Zitron’s podcast 15 Minutes in Hell he shares his insights on the WGA strike and the current state of the business, including:
The studios’ AI ambitions: have underpaid assistants feed it prompts, claim the results as intellectual property and prevent writers from obtaining creator credits (and the larger paychecks that would go along with such credits).
Streamers had no business plans for their subscription models and most will move to relying more on ad-based revenue.
The end goal of the AMPTP is breaking the WGA and changing writing from a career to an “endless side hustle.”
Strangely on the AMPTP’s side re: side hustles is comedian Bill Maher, who suggested strikers were “kooky” for believing “you’re owed a living as a writer… you’re not” (via Deadline).
Does Bill pay his writers a living wage? Former SpongeBob SquarePants writer Josh Androsky has thoughts:
when my old reps tried to convince me to write for ‘real time’ they said the writers got paid better than anyone in late night, when i asked why they said because it was so awful working with bill.
— josh androsky (@ShutUpAndrosky)
7:30 PM • Sep 4, 2023
A Requiem for the Netflix DVD Queue
Over at The Atlantic, Joshua Keating pens a eulogy for Netflix’s DVD service… or more specifically, for its unique queue. Keating writes:
When I added a movie to the queue, I was leaving a small gift for my future self, along with a record of what I was feeling, thinking, and experiencing when I made the selection.
Nailed it! The DVD queue pre-solved our modern much-lamented choice overload on streaming sites. As Keating notes, “Long day at work and not really in an Ingmar Bergman mood? Too bad, buddy. You-from-eight-months-ago thought you should watch The Silence, so that’s what you’re watching.”
As a Netflix subscriber since 2003, I have tremendous nostalgia for the days when my movie-watching was predetermined by my past self. 2005 Steve wanted 2007 Steve to watch 2001’s Steve Martin vehicle Novocaine… and he did! (Me, Steve not Martin, Steve.)
Now the hours I spend scrolling through movies greatly exceeds the time I spend actually watching movies. Whichever streamer solves this problem will secure my business!
RIP, DVD queue and all my past Steves.
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:
Richard Linklater on why indies might be “gone with the algorithm.” (link)
How Rotten Tomatoes got gamed. (link)
Did you see The Nun II? Here’s how they made THAT scene. (link)