Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1504731
14 M PS E . O R G DEAR DIALOGUE DETECTIVE be my back-up plan (but then again, who knows, AI might replace coders too! Quite possible). I have been living and breathing AI for decades, I'm very familiar with what has happened in the past, what is going on right now, and what could be happening in the future." Neil H.: "Good question, but you might just as well ask, 'How long until ART is dead?' How long before we watch robots performing on Broadway? (They never get sick, they never forget their lines, their performance is consistent.) Studios love any opportunity to commoditize the process of making movies; it's not anything remotely related to an art form to them, it's a bland manufacturing process designed to return a huge return in investment. Happily, audiences aren't entertained by balance sheets and profit and loss accounts. Humans enjoy watching other humans doing things that they can't. Abandon hope when that stops being the case." Joel A. says, "One of the downsides I see with AI getter better and better is that the audience gets a feeling that it's so easy to do this and that. To the point that they think a colorist or others wouldn't be needed anymore. And they will be even harder to impress. It doesn't matter if you can do something better. If a client can do something one-third as good in-house, they will." Justin F.: "The premium end of the industry may retain the older methods but I believe the rest of the industry will be gradually reduced. As far as ADR, yes there will be some legal qualms to begin with but they will absolutely disappear very quickly. This isn't to say I am fearful (I work nowhere near the top end) but I do believe this is the direction. I think of precedents like early digital when that came in and then when MP3s were a thing. There were always people demanding to retain standards, etc., but eventually, over time, standards just kind of readjusted which is a product of both the quantity of content now made and the expectations of the end consumer. My mind also goes to every time I quote for a job, the direction always seems south and I can imagine there are a few producers out there pretty stoked with the future." David P. Again: "That's exactly the pathway my own thoughts have gone down unfortunately. Not sure if I agree we're 80% of the way there yet though, as the devil is in the details and the implementations for the users themselves to be able to make use of. But it is definitely the direction we are going in, and once we're 100% of the way there (and widespread adoption too ... which might take longer, cultural changes in ways of working might be slow to change), then my job becomes almost totally pointless (especially if this can be done in real time!). As it won't matter at all if they have some sh*tty scratchy distorted sounding audio source." Evan D.: "I don't think people realize how quickly this is improving, and the ramifications it will have to so many industries. A year ago, they couldn't generate a photo-real image, now it totally can." David P.: "Exactly! In the space of one year, we went from laughably bad AI-generated images to photo- realistic images. Stock. Photography. Is. Dead. True for many other jobs too, such as many copywriters who rely upon bulk work. Gone. Look at how, in the space of a few months, we went from LLMs unable to code, to now able to write the code for entire games for people who have never coded before in their life! My friend has never ever coded before in his life, but in the space of a few weeks, he's created a 20,000-line computer program to handle some music automation for him. When will this tsunami be rolling in to hit our jobs as post-production mixers or (in my case), production mixers? I don't think my job as I know it will still exist at all by the time I reach retirement age. What's my back-up plan instead?? If any of us still have more than a handful of years left of our working life still left to go, we need to be seriously asking ourselves that question and preparing for this possibility." Sam K.: "I agree—we won't be recording anything in the future—AI will just create it from scratch." Mark H.: "I won't be surprised to see group ADR disappearing within five years. It's just a matter of time before some company creates a program that can easily create custom group sessions with a huge library of core-created voices that you can even feed scripted lines into for specific call-outs." A BBC news article written by Chris Vallance, technology reporter, on March 28, 2023, writes: Artificial intelligence (AI) could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs, a report by investment bank Goldman Sachs says. It could replace a quarter of work tasks in the US and Europe but may also mean new jobs and a productivity boom. And it could eventually increase the total annual value of goods and services produced globally by 7%.