Age of Abundance
Jeffrey Katzenberg, who co-founded DreamWorks, said that up to 90% of creative roles on animated movies could be replaced by AI within a year.
But I think he's staring down the wrong end of the telescope.
Pixar released Toy Story in 1995 and has since produced 28 animated features. They're all brilliant in their own way (although Brave is a personal favorite).
They've also done a fantastic job balancing commercial success and artistry. Pixar never ran out of road with their ideas (unlike Marvel's recent superhero mega-movies). Pixar has been consistently recognized at the Oscars, winning Best Animated Feature for many movies, and for those of you who like a little more quantification, Bob Iger paid $7.4 billion for Pixar back in 2006 when $7.4 billion was real money.
Yet despite this success, despite their cultural status, artistic credentials, business value — they've made less than 1 movie per year.
Instead of cutting 90% of creative roles on an animated movie, isn't a better question, "what happens when Pixar can make 10 movies per year, not 1?".
I suppose it depends, right? Would each movie be any good? Would we even have time to watch every movie? Are Pixar fans ready for a new movie every month? It sounds relentless...but I don't hate the idea.
If inventions like YouTube, Netflix, Kindle, Substack, Tiktok, Steam Deck, and Spotify have taught us anything, it's that we have a seemingly insatiable appetite for content.
Perhaps it goes deeper. Perhaps we're looking for meaning and connection; but that's kinda besides the point. Whatever the motivation, we know that folks are spending more time on various devices, metaphorically glued to stories and experiences—and we're nowhere near the upper limit of "human time on device" in any given day.
So instead of worrying about AI technology taking away, perhaps the real concern should be how much it will add. The obvious fear is that the technology facilitates an abundance of mediocrity. When it costs very little to make a bad idea, there's nothing stopping bad ideas being made. But I don't buy that. I've seen plenty of bad movies that made it through the studio system. I've interacted with (too many!) terrible experiences to know that there's room to improve our human-managed approval processes for UX. And it's the same argument that was made when YouTube became successful. If anyone can create a "film" and distribute it online, then it's going to erode the overall quality of the industry. Pff. Rubbish. I spend hours watching things on YouTube I LOVE, that no commissioning editor in their right mind would ever spend money on. Martijn is a great example; I've loved watching him renovate two stone buildings in the Alps, but I suspect you wouldn't. That's okay. It's the niches that make YouTube so great.
The niches give me hope too. Hope for a different type of future. Not a dystopian reality where the PixarBot makes one movie per year, but not the omni-terrible-content future either. I see a different path, where AI makes it easier for humans to do remarkable things that other humans will love, and pay money for, and spend time with. That's a future we can all be excited about.