About 62,000 California entertainment jobs in film, television, music and video games will be disrupted by the rise of artificial intelligence over the next three years, a new study suggests. years.
Published Monday, The report further estimates that 204,000 U.S. entertainment jobs will be affected by AI over the same period. A job is considered disrupted when a significant number of tasks within that role are consolidated, replaced or eliminated using AI, the study explains.
Consulting firm CVL Economics surveyed 300 people entertainment industry leaders — including senior managers, senior managers, middle managers and producers — for the study, which analyzes the impact and implications of generative AI use in business. The report was commissioned by the Animation Guild, the Concept Art Assn., the Human Artistry Campaign and the National Cartoonists Society Foundation.
After a number of Animation Guild members expressed concerns about the threat of AI, the union intends to use the results of this study to inform its bargaining strategy and goals, said Brandon Jarratt, who serves on the Animation Guild’s board of directors and AI working group.
The data is a window into the attitudes and intentions of the industry’s most powerful people when it comes to AI, and Jarratt hopes it will prove invaluable – “especially when it comes to shoring up our own contractual language around technological change.
“The tool itself is almost never the problem,” Jarratt said. “Studios are always looking for ways to spend less money. And if they feel like they’re going to be able to cut budgets in order to meet shareholder projections or whatever, then they’re going to try to exploit that in any way they can – and that’s where the fear comes from. .
In an industry already brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic, overspending during the streaming wars, overlapping labor disputes, and corporate mergers causing mass layoffs, AI is only one more key to worry about for entertainment workers.
The increasing prevalence of AI has recently appeared as a source of tension in Hollywood, particularly during last year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes, which culminated in the WGA and SAG-AFTRA winning limitations and protections regarding the use of modern technology in their contracts with studios.
However, those surveyed were less concerned about the potential fallout for writers and actors than for other professions. Adam Fowler, founding partner of CVL Economics, suspects that the gains writers and actors made under these contracts influenced the types of jobs that survey participants considered AI-friendly.
“In terms of the specific jobs and roles that we ended up talking about in the report, the questions about acting and writing were much fewer overall,” Fowler observed.
According to the study, the job tasks most likely to be affected by AI in the film and television industry are 3D modeling, character and environment design, generation, cloning and voice composition, followed by sound design, tool programming, script writing, animation and rigging, concept art/visual development and light/texture generation.
About a third of respondents predict that AI will replace 3D modelers, sound editors, re-recording mixers and broadcast, audio and video technicians by 2026, while a quarter expect Sound designers, composers and graphic designers are also affected. Only 15% reported that writers, illustrators, animators, and look, surface, and material artists were vulnerable to AI.
“I was really surprised that 3D modeling was so high,” said Nicole Hendrix, co-founder of Concept Art Assn., who called the study results “scary.”
“There’s obviously so much discussion in the news about ChatGPT and programs like Stable Diffusion, so we expected to see anything with these more disrupted platforms,” added Concept Art Assn. co-founder Rachel Meinerding. “It was interesting to see some of these other positions that we thought were maybe a little further away from travel being so high up.”
In the music and sound recording industry, the tasks most likely to be affected by AI are voice generation and cloning, music generation and recording, and music composition. lyrics, followed by mastering, mixing and programming tools, according to the study.
More than 50% of survey participants predicted AI would replace sound designers in the next three years, while more than 40% predicted AI would arrive for music editors, sound technicians and sound engineers. About a third of those surveyed predict a similar fate for songwriters and studio engineers.
Meanwhile, in the video game industry, 3D modeling and concept/visual art development are the tasks most vulnerable to AI, followed by character and environment design, sound design, programming tools and voice generation and cloning, the report said.
About a third of industry leaders surveyed said software developers, sound editors, special effects artists, and software analysts and testers were at risk of being supplanted by AI, while 20% thought that 3D artists, game designers, UI/UX designers and video game designers and testers would be out of place.
Overall, the study concludes that entry-level positions in the entertainment industry will be disproportionately affected by the rise of AI – a detail that particularly concerned Hendrix.
“When you look at technology that replaces (or consolidates) a junior or entry-level role…it hurts the ecosystem,” she said. “What does it mean if no one really comes in and the bar is now this immovable wall?”
Additionally, the report identifies 72% of entertainment companies surveyed as early adopters of generative AI, while 75% of respondents said AI has already made it easier to remove, reduce, or consolidate businesses. jobs in their commercial division.
Although most survey participants noted that AI has also created and will continue to create new job opportunities, it is unclear whether these new jobs will be accessible to workers displaced by technology.
“It’s not like (workers in) roles that are consolidated and lost will automatically be eligible for these new roles,” Hendrix explained. “They’re different skill sets. It’s not… an individual conversion.
Jarratt, CTO at Disney Animation, said he wasn’t looking to reject AI “wholesale.” He believes that there is ways AI can be used improve working conditions and allow animation staff to focus on the more rewarding artistic aspects of their work by eliminating some of the more routine tasks, such as manually painting a brick texture on a wall.
Ultimately, Jarratt said the Animation Guild hopes to “help set the industry standard for what kinds of tools are appropriate and…that are going to help artists, and which ones are going to hurt them and hurt their means of subsistence.
