By Gavin Boyle
Zachary Levi explained why he believes AI will transform Hollywood for the worse as people in the industry lose their jobs and creativity is sapped away.
“Everyone will have to come to a point in whatever business you run, if you employ human beings, you are going to have to ask yourself, ‘it’s a shiny thing, I could replace X amount of my workforce, or not.’ And we need to be conscious of that,” Levi said while speaking at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival. “And, unfortunately, I think in Hollywood, the ramifications are going to be dire.”
The actor has been concerned about the impact AI may have on the industry, not only for the workforce but also the heart and soul of projects, since the technology began to emerge. For this reason, Levi created Wyldewood Productions in 2020 with the goal of creating a studio space dedicated to promoting projects that are entirely free from AI.
Related: Zachary Levi Wants to Keep Art ‘Organic’ in the AI Age. Here’s How He’s Doing It.
“When it comes to the arts, the arts are one of the only things that actually makes us human, and we have to do something in the face of all of that when everyone can just go to their computer and generate whatever they want, whenever they want,” Levi said in February.
“May we create a place — and that is what I’m trying to do with Wyldwood — where we hold a line and we say, listen, we use AI to optimize workflows and stuff, but when it comes to actually making a movie, a TV show, a video game, music, anything in the arts and sciences of entertainment, may we continue to do that in a way that, like, organic food is, like, human made ‘organic,’ certified organic art. Because, I think we owe it to our children, we owe it to posterity, we owe it to ourselves that there is at least some option.”
These concerns come at an inflection point in the industry as many studios are beginning to introduce AI while the majority of creatives continue to oppose the technology. Disney previously announced plans to introduce AI onto Disney+ in a way that will allow users to generate videos of their favorite characters, while TikTok creator ByteDance released a cutting edge video generation tool earlier this year that created extremely realistic clips.
“There’s phenomenal opportunities to deploy AI across our direct-to-consumer platforms, both to provide tools that make the platforms more dynamic and more sticky with consumers, but also to give consumers the opportunity to create on our platforms,” former Disney CEO Bob Iger said last November.
“AI is going to give us the ability…to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content and to consume user-generated content – mostly short-form – from others,” he added.
While AI has the possibility to streamline production, it needs to be implemented carefully so not to take over the creative space and crowd out those who make Hollywood’s stories connect with audiences worldwide.
Read Next: AI Comes to Disney. How Will It Change the Company?
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