The 'Will AI Kill Hollywood Narrative?' had a moment back in 2024 when OpenAI released their SORA video generation model. For the first time, people saw an AI-generated video that was nearly equal to what they saw on TV and in the movies. OpenAI didn't capitalise on that, but a new video AI model called Seedance looks like it might be about to fulfil that promise.

The US TV & film industry is already struggling. It rapidly expanded during Covid, but has now shrunk to be much smaller than it was before Covid. This isn't down to AI. The hours spent watching TV & movies are shrinking, as more and more people spend their time watching online videos. These are mostly made for free by other users, or in a content-creator ecosystem separate from traditional TV/movies.

AI like Seedance looks set to turbo-charge the online content-creator ecosystem. Soon they'll have (almost) all the advantages Hollywood has, but won't have its costs. It's hard to imagine that the era of movie budgets in the hundreds of millions can last much longer.

Seedance in Action - Tom Cruise Vs. Brad Pitt

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