How AI Is Changing Entertainment (and Everything Around It)

Becoming The New Normal

AI has come a long way over the years, but it feels like it has taken over everything at once. The entertainment sector has been one of the industries that has felt the real impact, with AI able to do most creative works.

But it’s not just the arts industry that has been transformed. AI is now being used in sports, tracking algorithms, and even online betting with 1xbet.ie.  It’s certainly become the new normal, but what exactly has been its effect on the creative industry so far?

Creating Animations and Comics

This industry has probably been the most affected. Initially, artists were happy as the technology could make their easier. For example, they didn’t need to deal with colour fillings and backgrounds that aren’t important to their stories – AI could just fill that for them.

However, the talk has changed in recent times as we now have platforms that can do the whole job, all you need to do is give it some prompts. This has made it possible for pretty much anyone to create animations and comics, which has raised significant questions.

A recent trend even saw AI recreate photos in the style of Studio Ghibli. Most people were impressed, but the creatives weren’t. The fact that you only need to use a simple tool like chat GPT to recreate creative work poses lots of questions around ethics and copyrights.

Scripts by Software?

2023 and 2024 saw the debut of several tools that can create long form content in pretty much any format. They’ve now become a daily tool for most people, and script writers have also adopted them as they can help with brainstorming, and can even create a whole scenes based on a writer’s style. This has made it possible for creatives to easily overcome writer’s block.

However, it’s also good to understand that all the text that these tools give out is based on patterns. This means that if you ask them to create long form content, at some point, everything will become similar or related. On top of that, AI can’t really capture human emotions the way writers do.

Of course, some people and even studios have experimented with this, but the result has been similar – it all feels stiff and mechanical. At the moment, AI is a great assistant to creatives, but it’s not a replacement.

The Rise of the Digital Actor

We’ve already seen the recreation of younger Marvel characters and Will Smith’s 23-year version in Gemini Man (2019). But even beyond de-aging characters, which has been around for a while, we have now fully-AI actors like Lil Miquela. She has 2.4m followers on Instagram and even a BWI ad.

As AI has become better, these characters are looking more and more human. They can even mimic the faces and voices of real actors, including how they walk.

But then, while all this is impressive, there will always be ethical concerns. For example, who owns an actor’s likeness? Can a studio re-use it even after the actor is dead? Plus, who actually owns the images AI engines use for training?

The 2023 Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes brought these to the surface, but AI is only getting better. It will be interesting to see if a balance can be drawn using government regulations.

Marketing and Distribution Are Evolving Too

AI isn’t just changing how different types of media is created but also how it reaches its audience – and the right ones. Streaming platforms are now using it heavily to understand what a particular user likes, but that’s just the simplest use case.

Behind the scenes, these companies are continually bringing in new AI tools to help create better marketing campaigns and optimise releases. The productions that don’t huge budgets are greatly benefitting from this as they can use these tools to target specific audience, so AI is levelling the playing field in lots of welcome ways.