AI is coming to movies and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m sure it has legitimate uses, as a tool used sensibly and moderately, but to use it in place of humans seems to me a road to disaster, that ends with a drop into nothingness.

Yet, as much as you couldn’t stop the move from silent to sound, black and white to colour, or practical to digital effects, I don’t believe you’ll be able to stop the move to artificial intelligence; there’s just too much money at stake.

First the technology will be used in a few smaller films, or less noticeable ways, and when the outcry happens, studios will judge whether or not to dial it back, but I don’t really believe they will change their plans now. I doubt the audience will care. Many of them won’t know enough about the tech to have an opinion, and many simply won’t be bothered by its use. It’s easy to think the anti-AI movement is bigger than it really is, but I doubt it will have much influence. In fact, AI is already here and being used in new films and shows, even if we don’t realise.

I’ve written before about how AI might be used by Hollywood, but one aspect in particular that stands out, that’s often brought up by its supporters, is how there can be a massive increase in film production.

Using AI, you can make films faster and cheaper, and as a result, make more of them. Oh, good.

This is obviously a bad idea. For a start, AI is not a creator, or even a sub-creator, it’s just a copier. It looks at what other people (or other machines) have done and then copies that, with a few tweaks. So any pretense at originality is gone.

Want a movie where aliens invade Earth? Simply type in the prompt, and you get a rehash of Independence Day, War of the Worlds, A Quiet Place, and any other successful stories of that kind. Of course, the more of these copies are made, the more the AI will begin to copy itself.

The problem here is that I can’t really offer a very good defence against this at the moment. Having seen the mutant that is Jurassic World: Rebirth, it’s hard to look at modern filmmaking and come to the conclusion that AI can make it worse. Rebirth is a stupid, lazy, cheap copy too, with non-existent characters, a ridiculous plot, and lots of scenes ripped off from better movies in the franchise (and from what I hear, there were going to be a lot more).

This is often the case with big films now, they aren’t original at all, and aren’t even entertaining, just reruns of tired old franchises that used to be great but have been flogged to death.

At best, I can simply hope that in the future, when and if Hollywood solves its current problems, that human creativity and inspiration will be allowed to return, and maybe we’ll get good films again. I can’t hold the same hope for AI.

I’m sure Hollywood would like to make more films. More films means more profit, or potential profit, and a greater number of movies a greater chance of a hit, but it’s all rather funny if it wasn’t so tragic to those who actually enjoy good-quality films.

If Hollywood can’t make money off its current films, and certainly can’t make good stories and new original ideas and franchises, then what makes them think they’ll do better by multiplying their output? 10 x bad is still bad.

Recently Amit Jain the CEO of Luma AI, which creates video-generating technology, said “Why are you making five movies a year when you could be making fifty, you should be making a hundred?2

Well, maybe because movies are supposed to be, to some extent, a product of love, care and craftmanship. Of course they need to make money too, but more often than not, quality and success go together.

By using AI as a way to multiply production, you get the equivalent of social media content. Even the most popular influencers can’t hope to have a hit with every pose, so they put out ten, twenty, fifty a day: many go unnoticed but a few go viral, and those are the ones they rely on. In short, Hollywood is now a content machine.

Netflix does something similar, though not quite so extreme. They make dozens of new shows every year, drop the whole series at once and see which ones hit, then make more. This is why it takes so long to get second seasons, because they aren’t planning for this to be a long-term show before release, just a “see what sticks” strategy. And you can be sure that Netflix is and will continue to be at the front of the AI charge.

All this is just a decreasing spiral. Every hit movie will be analysed, its characteristics noted, and sequels made that follow the same pattern. Making more films doesn’t solve Hollywood’s problems. More people won’t go to see them in the cinema, it won’t solve the reliance on dried-up IP. In fact they’ll double down on it. There’s only so many hours of content people will watch, and there’s already too much.

Meanwhile, the fleeting, virtual nature of modern life means there’s actually a market for well-made, tangible products, hence the increase in vinyl sales despite its inconvenience in comparison with Spotify, and the fact decades old movies still make the top of streaming charts when they arrive on Netflix or Prime.

If Hollywood were smart, they would realise this, look closely at their problems, find out what’s wrong, admit they failed, and make plans to save themselves from collapse. But that would be sensible. Instead what we get is the panic option: make movies cheaper and make more of them. A dilution of products (or more properly “Content”), built on algorithms, reactionary decisions, chasing trends, and a spiraling repetition of self-reference and banality, led by computers.

If you thought the last ten years of entertainment were bad, just wait for the next ten.