The future of commercial art is driven by AI. Feature length films will take weeks to complete, costing a fraction of what previous big-budget movies cost. Artists who get on board now will benefit.
AI Content Experience of the Week goes to: Kitsune, an AI-generated animated film about a tale of love between two souls, separated by everything except their shared feelings of loneliness.
From the Creator, Henry Daubrez, “All shots were generated with Google’s text-to-video #VEO2, and let me tell you—it wasn’t magic. 1,700 curated sequences (out of ~5,000–7,000 generations) later, what impressed me most was the global consistency and how small tweaks could lead to big results.”
Technology is democratizing art in a profound way.
As the tools that utilize this technology improve, trained artists will be empowered to create nearly whatever they want without the need for massive funding or years-long personal commitment.
Generating films will be like drawing a picture. Imagine making a film like Inside Out in just a few weeks.
Will Pixar produce higher quality, more refined, and marketable movies? Probably.
How any of this ultimately affects big studios is another unknown.
The copyright issue has not been resolved either. I doubt it will.
AI companies that survive 2025 will close deals with publishers of all kinds for content rights, satisfying any disputes. Those who had their content ripped from places like Reddit or ArtStation or wherever else will likely be asked to kindly shove off.
Maybe a big pot of money will be set aside for such individuals. Celebrities, authors, and others could lead these court cases. Small folks might get a few bucks after the more important people get theirs.
It sucks for anyone who has to watch their work be spun up into some digital model and monetized by a tech company to enrich their shareholders.
But here we are.
The notion of what is art and what is copyright is being rewritten in real time.
It is also critical that things change. The cost of producing modern content has gotten out of hand. As has the shrinking number of gatekeepers who handle distribution and make it nearly impossible for creators to get their works made, let alone seen.
We should look at self-publishing in the book industry for how this will turn out.
In the times before the Kindle, few authors were published or made any money.
Publishing houses made deals with bookstores to get them to buy hundreds of thousands of an author’s books at a discount. They then put these books at the front of the store, burying any other author’s work, ensuring their author’s success. There was a lot of nepotism.
Then, self-publishing came along. It was a gold rush of words. Authors who had books buried in their drawers could suddenly find an audience and a living.
Of course, not everything was perfect. We can argue the specifics of whether self-publishing was good for literature in the long term. What is inarguable is that those with ideas that would never be accepted by Publishing Houses now had a platform for their voices and a chance to earn something for their efforts.
The same will happen with film and television. AI content will proliferate into new and existing spaces.
There will still be Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony, and Universal. They will dominate content distribution with big-budget fare. But many smaller distributors will open up. Then, the bigger guys will start letting in a few of the smaller folks.
It will all even out.
But what about jobs?
I am not a professional artist, but the number of artists I see lamenting the loss of hand-drawing multiple frames for a character’s movement, spending a year or more on a scene that lasts only a few minutes, is very odd.
Why would you not want to create those frames of a scene in mere days? Then, go off and contribute your talents to other projects.
Remember, you are primarily creating commercial content. Yes, art is involved. But it is still a commercial project.
Nothing is stopping you from doing everything manually in your spare time. Other than your need to pay bills. If you want to earn money with your skills, you need to solve problems for others. Making things faster and for less money is the solution.
Yet artists (including myself as a writer) do see laboring over the same thing for months and years as romantic. In reality, in the era of AI, that view is antiquated.
There is also an excellent opportunity to get in on the ground floor. If you can figure out a good workflow with these tools and then go into the office of a producer or director or executive and say, “Hey, I can make your next animated film faster and for less money,” you will be seen as a pioneer and be given opportunities and notoriety that you would otherwise never enjoy.
Or, you learn the tools and be helpful to other creators. Help tens, hundreds, or thousands of artists to bring their vision to life.
This is a transformation to the entertainment industry that is bigger than the printing press or online publishing.
Given the entertainment industry is worth trillions of dollars, there is a lot of wealth to go around. And it will only keep getting bigger.
I say, get in now.
