Hello my name is Fionn Manley I am 21 years old and I am a creative industries and visual culture student from Drogheda Co Louth.
AI,Creative Labour and the Film Industry:A Historical Analysis
The introduction of AI chatbots with the release of ChatGPT on November 30th 2022 marked the beginning of a new era in the film industry. Panic would begin to spread among artists and writers alike with the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strikes partially motivated by fear from writers that AI would replace them. To help understand the contextualise this labour panic, this research considers similar panics in the history of the film industry. Technological shocks experienced by the film industry throughout the 20th and 21st century include sound-synchronisation and computer-generated imagery (CGI). The research analyses the effects these technologies had on the labour markets of the time to draw parallels and differences to the current AI challenges presented to today’s film industry.
A mixed method methodology was used combining secondary sources from key thinkers such as Douglas Gomery, Stephen Lisberger and Erik Brynjolfsson, alongside primary data collection. In addition, the research considered specific films as case studies, including The Jazz Singer (1927), Jurassic Park (1993), and Thanksgiving Day (2026). Primary research consisted of in-person interviews with industry professionals including Mark Mullery of Cartoon Saloon and Simon Wong of the Irish Centre for High-End Computing.
Findings suggested two possible outcomes for AI within the film industry. Possibility one is a scenario similar to the introduction of sound synchronisation in 1927 that despite the AFM best efforts, wiped nearly an entire profession of the in-theatre musician. Another possibility is the scenario presented by the introduction of CGI in which AI will simply integrate into the current hybrid system and become another tool used by artists and creatives to tell a more convincing story while also still retaining more traditional crafts.
Ultimately, the historical record suggests that while technological disruption in film is inevitable, its impact is rarely uniform. AI is unlikely to replace creative labour fully, and will instead begin to augment the existing labour and integrate into the current hybrid system that film industry currently employs.
