Netflix’s Ted Sarandos On A.I. Threat To Hollywood: “A.I. Is Not Going To Take Your Job, The Person Who Uses A.I. Well Might”

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Ted Sarandos, the Netflix co-CEO, denies claims that AI threatens Hollywood’s creative jobs.

In a new interview, Sarandos dismissed fears that AI would eliminate jobs and noted that technological advancements enhance some creative work.

“I have more faith in humans than that. I really do. I don’t believe that an A.I. program is going to write a better screenplay than a great writer, or is going to replace a great performance, or that we won’t be able to tell the difference,” he told The New York Times. “A.I. is not going to take your job. The person who uses A.I. well might take your job.”

Sarandos noted that “A.I. is a natural kind of advancement of things that are happening in the creative space today, anyway.”

“Volume stages did not displace on-location shooting. Writers, directors, editors will use A.I. as a tool to do their jobs better and to do things more efficiently and more effectively,” he continued. “And in the best case, to put things onscreen that would be impossible to do.”

The Netflix executive used animation as an example, going from hand-drawn animation to computer-generated animation, saying that more people are employed in animation now.

“Remember how everybody fought home video? For several decades, the studios wouldn’t license movies to television,” he added. “So every advancement in technology in entertainment has been fought and then ultimately has turned out to grow the business. I don’t know that this would be any different.”

In the same interview, Sarandos also said that Barbie and Oppenheimer would’ve been just as successful on the Netflix platform. Sarandos also talked about his regret in comparing Netflix to HBO in the early days of the streaming platform.