With OpenAI’s recent release of the Sora 2 video generation tool, it’s easy to see how content creators are increasingly tempted to utilize generative-AI technology in their work.
Netflix said earlier this year that it’s excited by the technology, and in a letter sent to investors on Tuesday as part of its latest earnings report the company confirmed its intent to utilize it for its original productions, saying that it was “very well positioned to effectively leverage ongoing advances in AI.”
But in an earnings call on the same day, Netflix boss Ted Sarandos also acknowledged that “it takes a great artist to make something great … AI can give creatives better tools to enhance their overall TV and movie experience for our members, but it doesn’t automatically make you a great storyteller if you’re not.”
Over the summer, Sarandos said that Netflix is of the view that AI represents “an incredible opportunity to help creators make films and series better, not just cheaper. So this is real people doing real work with better tools. Our creators are already seeing the benefits in production through pre-visualization and shot planning work, and certainly visual effects.”
Earlier in the year, in April, Netflix revealed that it had used AI in The Eternaut (featured in our list of this month’s best Netflix shows), an Argentine sci-fi drama based on the comic by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López.
Visual effects artists on The Eternaut worked with Netflix to depict a building collapse in Buenos Aires, marking the first time for an AI-generated sequence to appear in a Netflix original series or movie.
Sarandos described the incorporated footage as “amazing,” adding that the sequence was completed 10 times faster than it would’ve been if traditional VFX tools and workflows had been used.
While AI technology for video creation and special effects is highly impressive and improving all the time, actors, voice artists, and others in the TV and movie industry are becoming increasingly concerned about the growing potential for AI to take away their work. Netflix is currently talking more about using it for special effects and other parts of the creative process, but some believe there’s an air of inevitability about the technology being increasingly deployed throughout a production, at the extreme end even replacing actors with digital replicas or AI-generated performances.
Sarandos hasn’t explicitly rejected the idea, and so as AI’s capabilities advance, it’s hard to see Netflix and other content producers ignoring its potential to reshape a much larger part of the production process.
