Tech Slowly Reinvents Cable

PLUS: The AI Lawfare Has Begun

Author

Steve
October 22, 2024

Greetings Hollywood tech nerds!

In this week’s post:

Subscribe to get Hollywood Tech Nerds magically delivered to your inbox every Tuesday!

Tech Slowly Reinvents Cable

For Halloween this year, I’m dressing up as a tech executive. My costume won’t be the stereotypical tech bro uniform, however. Instead I will put on a classic Halloween costume like a ghost or a vampire but say “This isn’t a ghost/vampire, it’s something completely new that will change the world! It’s a decentralized spiritual essence/blockchain-based organic life disruptor.”

These thoughts were running through my mind as I read this piece in Variety on Amazon’s recent deal to distribute Apple TV+ content via its Prime Video Channels section. Basically: you open up Amazon Prime and in addition to its Prime VOD selections and purchase/rental options, you also have a number of “channels” to which you can subscribe. Hmmm, why does this sound so familiar?

Apple TV+ is a big get, but most of Amazon’s success has been via niche content, as the article describes:

Where Amazon does stand out, however, is the aggregation of niche SVODs, or what Antenna calls “specialty” services, such as British TV streamers BritBox and Acorn TV and anime service Crunchyroll.

Antenna data shows a whopping 58% of specialty SVOD subscriptions in the U.S. were purchased through Prime Video Channels as of Q2. Apple, the second most common distribution channel for these platforms, controlled just 11%…

This indicates Prime Video functions as an effective marketplace for niche streaming subscriptions, enticing consumers to sample services with which they might not otherwise engage.

It also underscores a fact further emphasized by the Apple TV+ deal: Aggregation, and the cuts of subscription revenues that come with it, are destined to become Amazon’s cash cow in the streaming business.

At this point, it’s not particularly insightful to observe that much tech “disruption” is simply “replicate industry with us in charge instead of them,” but to me that is the obvious future of content distribution. All of these streaming services are not individually sustainable. What is sustainable is aggregation, and as content owners pull themselves out of the unwinnable streaming race, Apple and Amazon will likely come to function as the new Comcast and Spectrum.

The AI Lawfare Has Begun

Being a bit negative on the tech folks today, but so what? What’s the worst they could do? Replace me with an AI bot trained on my past newsletters and by doing so maintain enough of a Steve simulacrum that people keep reading, forcing me to go back to work folding shirts as Ross, a job which is soon taken by yet another AI-powered robot which can also fold shirts? Hmmm maybe I should be more careful…

Our most glorious tech leaders often live by the maxim: “It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission,” and that is certainly a strategy about to receive a thorough investigation. As The Hollywood Reporter covers in two separate articles, content owners have become increasingly concerned with tech companies allowing AI to utilize their imagery and content.

Tesla partnered with Warners for the robotaxi showcase, which was done from a studio lot, the lawsuit says. At the presentation, Musk reached the stage in a “cybercab” before showing an image of a male figure wearing a trench coat as he surveys the abandoned ruins of a city bathed in a misty, orange light. In the upper left corner, the words “Not This” appear superimposed on part of the sky.

This image was “clearly intended to read visually” as an actual still from Blade Runner 2049‘s iconic sequence of Ryan Gosling’s character exploring a ruined Las Vegas. Alcon claims it was created by copying images from the film and prompting an AI image generator for a replica over the company’s clear denial of licensing rights.

Musk directly referenced the Denis Villeneuve sci-fi epic in his remarks. “You know, I love ‘Blade Runner,’ but I don’t know if we want that future,” he said. “I believe we want that duster he’s wearing, but not the, uh, not the bleak apocalypse.”

Musk is a well-known fan of Blade Runner… although perhaps not a very good understander of Blade Runner based on this tweet about the Cybertruck:

Ahh yes, “what Bladerunner would have driven.” A man who definitely understands both Blade Runner and copyright law!

The suit alleges that Perplexity, which is an AI research and conversational search engine, draws on articles and other copyrighted content from the publishers to feed into its product and then repackages the content in its responses, or sometimes uses the content verbatim, without linking back to the articles. The engine can also be used to display several paragraphs or entire articles, when asked.

Expect to see a lot more of this in the coming years. AI companies will resort to all kinds of razzle dazzle to keep the investor cash flowing, and media companies cannot afford to let even a portion of that borne on the backs of their owned content. To behave otherwise will be to sign their own death warrants, as so many other industries have learned too late.

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

In the wake of Redbox’s collapse: a privacy nightmare. (link)

One of the most important music apps is shutting down. (link)

The miracle of the making of cult classic The Fall. (link)