Netflix and production with AI: “the public doesn’t care”, really?

In a period where the use of AI to “replace real artists” is scary, Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, had already tried to reassure us. And he reiterated on the occasion of the company's latest quarterly results announcement.

Sarandos and the magical connection££££

“I think shows and films gain audience support when they make a connection. It lies in the beauty of the writing, the chemistry between actors, the surprise of the plot twists, etc., explains Sarandos. And I'm not saying that the audience doesn't notice these other elements, but I think they mainly care about the connection to the narrative. I would say that he probably doesn't care much about budgets, and perhaps not even about the technology (i.e. generative AI, Editor's note) used to produce them."

And to take the arrival of CGI in animation as an example: "Animation hasn't gotten cheaper, it's gotten better moving from hand-drawn animation to computer animation, and more people are working in it." animation today than ever before in history.”

It ends up being seen££££

What Ted Sarandos doesn't say, however, is that computer-generated images have always offered something new and not recreated from the work of others , that the avowed aim is undoubtedly to pay its screenwriters less, and that at this stage broadcasters and production companies sometimes do not really know themselves to what extent AI is used by the authors. Example: during a recent call for cinema projects in France, screenwriters were asked, for the sake of transparency, to specify the percentage of AI used in writing assistance. Not to mention the standardization of content, and that ends up being visible…