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- [00:00]
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- [00:59]
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- [01:30]
Uber Eats / Carvana Advertiser
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- [02:09]
Katie Drummond
From Wired this is the big interview where we get to know the people beyond the headlines in conversations that explore the intersection of technology, power and culture. I'm Katie Drummond, Wired's global editorial Director. I love a good scoop. And earlier this summer, my guest today, Matt Bellany, the co founder of Puck, had a bombshell in June, just mere months after Amazon announced an enormous investment into OpenAI, to the tune of $50 billion. Matt broke the story that Amazon MGM Studios had decided to dump their Sam Altman biopic, which had cost them some $40 million to make. Reportedly, the decision came down to the tech giant's concern that the film portrayed their new strategic partner in a less than flattering light. The news sent a bit of a shockwave through Hollywood as the implications of Silicon Valley's grip on the industry has seemingly entered a new phase. Or maybe it was a sign that the shift has already taken place. As massive tech conglomerates continue to consolidate their grip on traditional studios, the core mechanics of the entertainment industry, from algorithmic green lighting to the slippery slope of AI integration, are being rewritten. To make sense of these changes, I invited Matt, the host of the Town podcast, to explain it to all of us. As one of Hollywood's most deeply sourced industry insiders, Bellany has spent years documenting the collision between Northern and Southern Californ. Matt joins me now. Matt, thanks so much for being here. So I have to start with the obvious, which is artificial intelligence. You've been on top of AI in Hollywood for a very long time, and you've said multiple times that, quote, everyone is doing it, meaning everyone is using AI, which might be news to Wired readers and listeners. Matt, tell us more. What do you mean exactly by that?
- [03:57]
Matt Bellany
Okay, well, there's two types of AI, as you know, there's generative AI, which is content creation and things like that. And then there's the, what I refer to as the corporate AI, like streamlining processes and better search results and things like that. So obviously on the second one, everyone is using it. I mean, I, I'm not going to name a name, but I heard a very interesting story about a very prominent showrunner who went into the writers room and basically castigated her writing team for not using ChatGPT to help with the process, to help with the pro.
- [04:32]
Katie Drummond
The creative process, or like the admin and the bookkeeping and the.
- [04:35]
Matt Bellany
The creative process. You know, here's a scenario, suggest some jokes, here's this, this, this. And it doesn't mean they use them. It's. You could do the same thing with Google. You could do the same thing with. It's just better and people are using it. I know. I've talked to screenwriters who use it to suggest scenarios or to give a description of the inside of a building where they want a scenario to play out, or things like that to me, seem like part of the process. And you may not know this. The Writers Guild is actually okay with that. They're fine with it as long as there is a credited writer on every script and that this process doesn't impact jobs. They are okay with the use of this technology. So that's one side, then the other side is generative and how this is making content. And there it's a little murkier because there are a lot of studios that are purporting to create AI generated movies, shorts, TV pilots. And I've seen a lot of them. They're not great. And I'm sure you've seen some of them.
- [05:43]
Katie Drummond
I have.
- [05:44]
Matt Bellany
They're better. They're better in animation. And I think this is where we're going to see the disruption first. But you can always kind of tell, and that's the problem when you're trying to relate to people. I can't wait to see what Elon's historically accurate version of the Odyssey looks like.
- [06:01]
Katie Drummond
Oh, I mean, it's obviously going to be spectacular. I'm sure he's hard at work on it. He's been staying up all night, all week, probably.
- [06:08]
Matt Bellany
I mean, the fact that he just said, first of all, historically accurate is hilarious for a work of fiction, but, you know, it just means it's going to be all white people. And the funny thing is, is if he tries to use or to scrape the actual version of the Odyssey, because if. I don't know if you saw the headlines, a full version of the Odyssey leaked on X last weekend, and before Universal could send a takedown, it was viewed like a million times.
- [06:35]
Katie Drummond
I actually had not seen that. I had not seen that.
- [06:38]
Matt Bellany
So who knows whether GROK got its hands on the actual Odyssey to train Elon's, you know, fake Odyssey, but whatever. So on the generative AI front, I think where we're seeing the biggest innovation slash disruption is in the animation world, where visually, scenes can be completed, storyboards done without the use of artists. You can extrapolate things. Doesn't mean it's the finished product. But even Netflix, they, on their earnings call this past. This past month, they said that 300 shows use generative AI.
- [07:17]
Katie Drummond
I saw that. Yeah, I saw that. And they're out sort of talking about that relatively loudly and freely. I'm wondering where the stigma is right now. I mean, you talked earlier about AI in the creative process. You said, I can't name names. Fair enough. It's a story about somebody castigating a writer's room. But are there members of Hollywood, actors, directors, screenwriters, who are calling out AI publicly while using it privately? I mean, how much of this is still happening sort of behind closed doors in secretive circumstances?
- [07:49]
Matt Bellany
Well, obviously, I don't know what everybody does behind closed doors.
- [07:52]
Katie Drummond
Well, you know what some of them do.
- [07:53]
Matt Bellany
I mean, I do, yeah. I know what people I talk to say to me, but, you know, their behavior. I don't know exactly. But I do know that there is still a taint on using it. Meaning, you know, a perfect example is Amazon did a whole media day where they brought in press and they have this whole AI generative studio that is being run by Albert Chang, one of their executives there, and they announced a bunch of shows, including some animation shows, and there were real creators on these shows. And almost immediately, the backlash that one of the creators got online was so crazy that he. And I don't say crazy meaning bad. I mean crazy meaning like loud, that he stepped down. So that's a real world, tangible impact of AI shaming, so to speak. And that is real. I think if I. If I had said the name of this showrunner, that showrunner would. Would hear from people, because it's. It's. It's seen as being part of the problem. And, you know, maybe that'll change. Netflix got a lot of leeway on this because what did they do? They bought Ben Affleck's AI company, right?
- [09:11]
Katie Drummond
They paid almost 600, $587 million. And I barely knew he had an AI company until he sold it.
- [09:19]
Matt Bellany
There were 16 employees.
- [09:21]
Katie Drummond
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:22]
Matt Bellany
So. So, you know, when I asked the question, Was this a $600 million press release?
- [09:27]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Right?
- [09:28]
Matt Bellany
Because Netflix wants to get into AI. They know that Ben is someone who has a ton of credibility and cachet as a movie star, an Oscar winner filmmaker, and having him attached to this company buys them a lot of leeway and allows them to do things I think that maybe others would bristle at. But it's Ben's company. He's vouching for it. And if you look at what that product actually does is it takes the footage that you have shot and it makes it available for Generative AI, essentially. So it prevents you from having to do a costly reshoot if all you need is some coverage of something. It prevents. It allows you to extend the periphery of a scene or get a circle shot when you didn't get it in camera. So it does. It's much more of a tool for filmmakers, or at least this is how they've presented it. Much more of a tool for filmmakers than something that is replacing, because that is the big fear in Hollywood is that this technology will replace us.
- [10:36]
Katie Drummond
And what was the talk of the town, so to speak, when Ben made that deal? Did people scratch their heads? Did they look at him with a different point? Of view than they had the day before?
- [10:48]
Matt Bellany
I honestly don't think so. I think that this, this. There are a number of filmmakers that are doing this and so called doing it the right way. Darren Aronofsky is one of them. And Ben, I think because of his credibility and because he's able to articulate very clearly, he's a very articulate guy, what he's actually doing and what he's not doing. And because of that, I think that it went over okay. And I think the biggest reaction I heard was like, holy cow. $600 million.
- [11:18]
Katie Drummond
It's a lot of money.
- [11:19]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, it's good. He's gonna make more money on that than he's made on any of his movies put together.
- [11:24]
Katie Drummond
Well, he's had some, I don't know, expensive divorces. So. Matt.
- [11:29]
Matt Bellany
I know the question is, did he launch it when he was married to jlo? I imagine their prenups probably contemplate their separate property.
- [11:36]
Katie Drummond
Well, I think they had a very expensive house they were trying to offload at one point. I'm I big entertainment gossip reader. I'm curious. Sort of since the spring, there have been a bunch of these deals. There were at least a handful between tech firms and Hollywood.
- [11:49]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Right.
- [11:49]
Katie Drummond
There was the Ben Affleck Netflix deal. There was the $75 million investment from Google DeepMind into A24, which pissed a lot of fans off. And we covered that at Wired. You had Lionsgate taking a stake in Runway, which is a big name in AI generated video. Why is this happening now? Is it that the technology is ready? Is it that Hollywood is more receptive to this idea? That potentially the technology can really have an impact on the industry? I mean, why now? It does feel a little bit like all of a sudden the floodgates are opening.
- [12:22]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. I think there's a couple things. First of all, the technology is better.
- [12:25]
Katie Drummond
Yeah.
- [12:26]
Matt Bellany
And it is applicable. And there's this fear in the C suites of the entertainment companies of being left behind. And if you talk to people at the studios, one of the biggest problems they, they face is the cost of movies. The cost of movies is. Goes. Keeps going up, whereas the box office is not necessarily covering that. I mean, if you look at, in the animation space, Pixar is a perfect example. Pixar originals, they can't make them for less than $200 million. I mean, they can, but it's very difficult to make them. They're made in California with California workforce. They have their own special process that labor intensive and they haven't used AI to the extent that they maybe could. So if you are looking at the box office for Pixar movies and the originals are only getting to 3, 4, maybe $500 million where they used to get to 7 and 8, you got to start to look at how to bring the cost down. And that's happening around the industry. If we are looking at a new landscape where movies just aren't going to gross as much as they did, you have to look at bringing the cost down and the guilds aren't bringing the cost down of labor. The unions are not willing to do that. So where does it come from? It comes from non unionized labor. That is for the most part the below the line people and the technology.
- [13:55]
Katie Drummond
That makes me think of Chris Nolan and the Odyssey, obviously, you know, it had a huge cast, it was made all over the world. It's making, in my view, from where I sit at Wired, I'm certainly not an expert in box office returns. It's making crazy money. And Chris Nolan, who I believe still professes to not have a phone, not surprisingly, has also been critical of AI while also being open to its uses. Right. He's kind of like a fence sitter, I would argue. But he has also pointed out that younger generations have rejected a lot of of quote unquote slop. Right. They're looking for authenticity. That said, are the Chris Nolans of the world to you very much going to continue to be even more the exception to the rule, like you just cannot get a movie like that made anymore.
- [14:41]
Matt Bellany
Yeah.
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Katie Drummond
Without you.
- [14:42]
Matt Bellany
I mean that's a perfect. That's a. He is a one of one at this point where he came into this situation with all the credibility and clout in the world. Having won the Oscar for Oppenheimer and having made a billion dollars off that movie, the Odyssey, if it is made at all by another filmmaker, it's made at very lower cost. Not 250, almost $300 million. You don't get to have all those stars in it. You just don't get to do it. But what I would argue to the studios is that is exactly why it broke through is that it smells different if you look at the trailer. Even if you look at everything around it, it smells authored and the audience can tell when something is authored. And in a world where you can create all the visual effects you want, there's something about seeing the Odyssey and knowing, because they are very good at marketing this, knowing that this is the vision of one guy who you trust and who is going to show you something real. And I say real in the sense that movies are increasingly going to be split into movies that are filmed with real people and real scenarios. And then those that are just either generative AI in practice or generative AI from the get go, like, it's not going to. There's going to be a split between things that we find authentic and those that we just kind of passively enjoy
- [16:13]
Katie Drummond
and just sort of consume, for lack of a better term.
- [16:16]
Matt Bellany
Exactly.
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Katie Drummond
I'm.
- [16:16]
Matt Bellany
So that's where social is going.
- [16:18]
Katie Drummond
Sure.
- [16:19]
Matt Bellany
And the more social media video goes that direction, I think, the bigger the market opening is for these kinds of big, special real movies, I think.
- [16:32]
Katie Drummond
But you have sort of the one of one Chris Nolan, legendary filmmaker over here with the Odyssey. Then you have someone like a Kane Parsons, right. Who made backrooms, which made a ton of money for a 24. I mean, it did phenomenally well. I think it was their highest grossing film that they've ever made. And he actually came out and said he did not support their deal with. With Google DeepMind. I'm curious about the degree to which you think Hollywood executives care, right, about a young filmmaker with maybe nascent influence and nascent clout having something to say about that. I mean, do they give a shit? Like, does it matter to them?
- [17:12]
Matt Bellany
Well, they give a shit in the sense that studios are ultimately in the business of talent relations. They want to appeal to the kinds of people that Kane Parsons represents. The whole reason Christopher Nolan made the Odyssey and Oppenheimer with Universal Pictures was because he was at Warner Brothers for many years and he woke up one morning in 2020 and all of their movies had been put on HBO Max and they made a deal. The CEO at the time said, because of the situation of the world right now, all of the 2021 movies are going to be put day and date on HBO Max. I remember that was furious.
- [17:53]
Katie Drummond
Yeah.
- [17:54]
Matt Bellany
And so that was an example of the CEO thinking tech forward. We're going to give the consumer what they want. We're going to, you know, build our streaming service, even if it means grossing less at the box office. And the number one filmmaker in town took his talents down the street and they, they would love to have the next Chris Nolan movie. But instead Universal, which didn't do that, they got the number one filmmaker and they have an amazing relationship with them. So I think to the extent that studios care about talent, and a 24 in particular very much cares about talent because they are not only appealing to those, those filmmakers as a business, they have a brand A24 is a brand new among people who care about movies. And this Google deal, they took a hit for that. People didn't like it, their fans did not like it. And if that ultimately comes back to bite them and they sell fewer A24 hats or scented candles or, you know, whatever's in their merch store today, please
- [18:55]
Katie Drummond
tell me they have scented candles.
- [18:56]
Matt Bellany
Oh, they do. They do. Yeah. I got my podcast producer, one of them, and he said it smelled nice.
- [19:02]
Katie Drummond
All right, good. Good for them.
- [19:03]
Matt Bellany
But that's where the studios care. Now. Is it going to stop them? No. They have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to bring down the cost of movies. And they see it as an evolution. I mean, there were people that, if you ever see the movie Babylon, there were a lot of people in Hollywood that were very apprehensive about sound in movies because it wiped out a whole generation of silent movie stars who had terrible voices and couldn't articulate themselves. Brad Pitt in that movie is a perfect example. And then there were people that didn't like television. They thought it would kill the business. And the VCR and digital and streaming, all the different technological advancements that have upended Hollywood. The studios see AI as another one of those and that if they manage it correctly, it can be. It can lead to more profitability and in their mind, more movies and TV shows.
- [19:58]
Katie Drummond
And do you agree with that thesis? Do you?
- [20:02]
Matt Bellany
That's the big question. I think it needs to be managed properly because if they go all in and all of a sudden the NBC fall lineup is a bunch of AI slop.
- [20:14]
Katie Drummond
Right.
- [20:15]
Matt Bellany
I think you lose the differentiator. AI is going to be everywhere on social, and we, you know, is better than anyone that the tech companies are going all in on it, and you're not going to be able to distinguish what's real and what's not real online. So in the future, if you watch a movie like the Odyssey and you see dolphins coming out of the water, you're going to think that's real. If the studios manage that. Right. And it was real in that movie. They happened to shoot on a day when dolphins were beside the boat and they got a great shot of dolphins jumping up out of the water. And that, to me, is the differentiator that the Hollywood studios still have. And I would hope that they won't squander it in pursuit of lowering costs.
- [21:08]
Katie Drummond
We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
- [21:14]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
You know that feeling when you open your laptop in the morning and before you've even had coffee, You've already got 40 new emails, six new pings, and a browser with Honestly, I've stopped counting the tabs. I used to think that was just what work was supposed to feel like. Faster, louder, more. And everyone kept telling me AI was going to fix it. But every AI tool I tried just became one more tab, one more app to explain myself to, one more thing slowing me down. Then I found Superhuman Go. It's an AI chat that just lives on the side of your browser. It already knows what you're working on, so you're not starting from zero every time. You can draft an email, summarize a huge thread, even search across your other apps without ever leaving the page you're on. No new tabs, no context switching, no losing your place. That's AI that actually works with you, not on top of you. Check it out. Find out more@superhuman.com
- [22:15]
Katie Drummond
comprehensive, witty, speculative.
- [22:17]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Critical.
- [22:18]
Katie Drummond
Insightful.
- [22:18]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Profound.
- [22:19]
David Remnick
Wide ranging.
- [22:20]
Katie Drummond
Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.
- [22:23]
David Remnick
I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [22:36]
Katie Drummond
Thoughtful, exquisite. Just, you know, real.
- [22:44]
Indeed Advertiser
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored jobs.
- [23:21]
Katie Drummond
I want to get to the labor question in all of this. You talked about animation being a place that's very, very ripe for this kind of disruption. Animation and everything else in Hollywood. To what extent will unions be able to safeguard the rank and file where AI is concerned and where job loss is concerned?
- [23:42]
Matt Bellany
Well, we've seen it come up as an issue in labor negotiations twice now.
- [23:47]
Katie Drummond
Yeah.
- [23:48]
Matt Bellany
Back in 23, and then this past year as well. And the guilds have taken the position. SAG AFTRA is not against AI. They will tell you openly we are not against the use of AI. We are against the use of AI that causes job loss for our members. And what that means is they want to be paid. If you use a synthetic performer in a movie, there is a fee paid. That makes it just as costly as using a human actor. So it's not like, let's populate our movie with AI avatars and save money for the Writers Guild. If there is a script on which AI is used, there is going to be a credited writer. And AI cannot be the author of a script for the purposes of a guild covered movie. And that's important because ultimately, what are unions? They are for preserving jobs. And they recognize the technology is out there, but they don't want it to be a replacement. And that's where it gets to the below the line union. And it's much more difficult because some people are covered, Some jobs are covered, some jobs are not covered. Some are member members of the Teamsters. Some are members of iatsi, which is a below the line union for various roles in the business. And there are lots of jobs on animated movies that are not union covered.
- [25:19]
Katie Drummond
I see.
- [25:20]
Matt Bellany
And those are the ones that I think are the most vulnerable. I'm not prepared to go all the way to what Jeffrey Katzenberg said a few years ago. He said something like 80 or 90% of the workforce on an animated movie will be replaced by AI. I don't think that's going to be the case. At least not for a while. But they are going to eliminate. They already are. They already are eliminating jobs and automating things.
- [25:42]
Katie Drummond
And I wanted to ask you about what some have called an emerging gray market. We did a story about this. We published an essay by a woman who was a screenwriter, and that worked right up. And so she started finding work, training AI models. I read that and sort of contemplating it was. I thought it was a very funny piece. I thought it was a little bit sad and dystopian. But this idea that she is basically training herself out of a job. How much do you hear about that happening? That Hollywood workers who are maybe underemployed for a variety of reasons are actually training AI to make a living, regardless of the stigma attached to the technology right now.
- [26:19]
Matt Bellany
To their knowledge or without their knowledge. Because you could argue that every screenwriter is training AI because the tech companies are scraping at will. Oh.
- [26:29]
Katie Drummond
And we're gonna. And we're gonna get to that. We're gonna get to copyright. But I guess. I guess a little bit of both.
- [26:34]
Matt Bellany
Explicitly. Yeah, Explicitly for a model.
- [26:36]
Katie Drummond
Do this for me.
- [26:37]
Matt Bellany
That was an interesting essay because I had not heard about that happening. I'm sure it does happen. I'm sure that there are jobs out there that, you know, where you are essentially Inputting different scenarios and inputting different types of conversations in order to train AI. I don't think that's super prevalent right now. But the other side of it, the. There is a widespread fear, in my opinion, in the screenwriting community that the work of screenwriters is being used to train these models without their consent.
- [27:11]
Katie Drummond
A widespread fear, you said. Yeah, but isn't that fear totally well founded? I mean, hasn't it been established that obviously all of that work, if it's public. Right. Would have been ingested by a model?
- [27:25]
Matt Bellany
Yes, but there's a difference between movie. Well, first of all, I don't think if you asked Google OpenAI Anthropic. I don't think if you asked them on the record, do you do this? They would say yes. Have you actually asked them?
- [27:45]
Katie Drummond
We've asked them about how their data sets are trained. I mean, they're trained on. On the open web.
- [27:51]
Matt Bellany
Right, But. But for the most part, most Finnish movies are not. You'd have to go to piracy sites
- [27:59]
Katie Drummond
and things like that. I see what you mean. I see what you mean. I understand what you mean.
- [28:01]
Matt Bellany
I don't. And certainly there are not. There are not databases where you can just get every single movie screenwrite. Now, there are script databases that you could probably access, but I don't believe every script that's ever been written is on the Internet.
- [28:22]
Katie Drummond
I think that that's fair. And as we're talking, they must be listening to this and thinking, what an opportunity for us if we have not yet accessed all of that data.
- [28:29]
Matt Bellany
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm naive about this stuff. This was a couple years ago, but I asked Aaron Sorkin, I had him for an interview and I had put a bunch of prompts into ChatGPT and. And asked it to create a scene of the West Wing set in the Trump White House.
- [28:48]
Katie Drummond
Okay.
- [28:49]
Matt Bellany
And it was so bad. It was laughably bad.
- [28:54]
Katie Drummond
They were all sitting instead of walking and talking. What were they doing?
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Matt Bellany
No, they were walking and talking, but it was just generic dialog. It was stuff that didn't make sense for a character. Like, it just. It just was nonsensical.
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Katie Drummond
Huh.
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Matt Bellany
Maybe that's improved.
- [29:08]
Katie Drummond
I will go check after we. I will go try to write my own episode of the West Wing. I wanted to ask you about IP and copyright. You used to be an entertainment lawyer, so you are, for many reasons, the perfect person to ask about this. Last June, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney, right, Accusing it of IP infringement because its products could create, like Shrek or Bart Simpson or Darth Vader. Warner Brothers then joined that lawsuit. Page Six recently called that legal war in its jujitsu phase because midjourney's lawyer.
- [29:40]
Matt Bellany
What does that mean? Is that a fancy word for discovery?
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Katie Drummond
It's a fancy word for, like, things are getting violent, maybe. Because Mid Journey's lawyers are now demanding that those companies disclose the ways they already use AI.
- [29:52]
Matt Bellany
Sure.
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Katie Drummond
So I guess they're, you know, they're. They're in jiu jitsu phase. Matt, obviously. What's the.
- [29:57]
Matt Bellany
Well, that's what you do when you sue someone. You have to know that they're going to come for your information. And that's what you give up when you file a lawsuit is that they have access to your documents and communications, just like you have access to theirs.
- [30:10]
Katie Drummond
I mean, what is your take on that case and on the fair use issue overall? Have we sort of just moved.
- [30:18]
Matt Bellany
I have an opinion.
- [30:19]
Katie Drummond
Yeah. What is your opinion?
- [30:20]
Matt Bellany
But I. But let me first say what the status of the law is, because it's very unclear. There has not been a definitive determination that using copyrighted material in a model is itself copyright infringement.
- [30:36]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Yes.
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Katie Drummond
I mean, the New York Times is in a very expensive legal battle over the same thing.
- [30:41]
Matt Bellany
The better argument for now for these companies to make is that the expression of the output of the model is infringing. So the example you use is you can take every Disney character and put them into a model, but if what spits out looks too much like Mickey Mouse, then that itself is infringement, not the ingestion of all of those characters.
- [31:10]
Katie Drummond
Yes. Now that makes sense.
- [31:11]
Matt Bellany
The entertainment industry would very much like to change that determination and to get courts to rule that the mere act of ingestion is the infringement. We'll see if that ultimately holds water, because it. It doesn't look like that's the way things are going. But, you know, there was just this. This settlement in the book case where a bunch of authors sued. I believe it was OpenAI. Might have been anthropic.
- [31:40]
Katie Drummond
I think it was anthropic.
- [31:41]
Matt Bellany
It was anthropic. Okay. And the settlement in that one was billions of dollars.
- [31:45]
Katie Drummond
Yes. It was outrageous. Yeah.
- [31:48]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. It was not cheap. I think it was the biggest settlement in the history of copyright law, and they're settling for a reason there. I think that the. Either the output was too similar or they're afraid of precedent on the input issue. And it's going to be fascinating to see how this unfolds over the next five to 10 years, because it's not clear and the companies are taking advantage of that, that, that vagueness.
- [32:19]
Katie Drummond
I mean, do you have a view here on who should win?
- [32:25]
Matt Bellany
Do you have a point of view? I mean it's not going to surprise you that I think that if you put hundreds of millions of dollars into the creation of valuable ip you should be able to protect that against people who are using it to, to spit out characters to compete with you.
- [32:49]
Katie Drummond
I mean that's essentially what sounds entirely reasonable. That sounds like an entirely reasonable point of view.
- [32:54]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. Whether that ultimately wins the day, I, I don't know because you have to look at the, the copyright law framework on this. But to use a fair use exception to scrape the entire Internet, which certainly was not contemplated when the copyright laws were first enacted, I think that's a stretch.
- [33:17]
Katie Drummond
What about human performers and the idea of voice and likeness? Some are trying to create standards where there aren't any right now. So there's the, this organization that Cate Blanchett co founded, RSL Media, the Human Consent Registry is what they have launched where it would be a tool that allows people to control how AI can use their likeness. Is that the way forward? Is that what we will see more and more of in the future?
- [33:44]
Matt Bellany
I hope so. But that requires buy in from the various AI companies and we don't know whether they are going to buy into that. And you know, what we have seen is that the entertainment industry is interested in this. Caa, the big talent agency represents Cate Blanchett. They have thrown their support behind this. And I like that kind of a thing where you, you have to get consent from a performer or from anyone really to utilize their name, image and likeness for training models. And sag AFTRA has gone a different direction. They are trying to get a federal right of publicity because right now this is a hodgepodge of state laws that protect name, image and likeness. And California has a good one, Minnesota has a good one and that they're using the state laws. But if there were a federal right of publicity and an interest in your name, image and likeness, that would make it easier to protect this federally. And copyright laws are federal laws obviously.
- [34:49]
Katie Drummond
Now you've also reported on agencies like CAA and WME meeting with AI companies to basically make deals about their clients likeness. What do we know about those deals as they exist now?
- [35:02]
Matt Bellany
Not, not that much. Okay, but this came about. Do you remember the Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt fight scene?
- [35:11]
Katie Drummond
In what?
- [35:11]
Matt Bellany
There was a Chinese model that created a fight scene between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
- [35:17]
Katie Drummond
Oh yes, I remember this. I was gonna Tell you, I have an 8 year old, so I don't see a lot of movies that don't involve Moana.
- [35:23]
Matt Bellany
Okay, so there was. Yeah, and this was, this was in the, you know, the wonderful three months when Sora existed.
- [35:32]
Katie Drummond
Oh yes. An incredible product that so many people
- [35:34]
Matt Bellany
wanted, especially when you couldn't use copyrighted images in it. It was really fun when you could make Moana fight Peter Griffin from Family Guy. But then when you couldn't, it was less compelling. So they are trying to have individual meetings with these companies and trying to get a blanket opt out for all of their clients. And now obviously the tech companies since their inception have wanted to operate under the, you know, the we will do what we want and you have to opt out. Right. The entertainment companies want the default to be opt out. And if you would like your name, image and likeness to be included, you can opt in. And that was the big issue with the Zuckerberg AI switch about a month ago. Remember that?
- [36:31]
Katie Drummond
Yes, I do. That actually was a Wired. That was a Wired story.
- [36:34]
Matt Bellany
Yeah. All of a sudden your, you know, your Instagram photos were going to be available for anyone to create AI out
- [36:41]
Katie Drummond
of unless you knew to go into the settings and you know, tick a button. Yeah.
- [36:46]
Matt Bellany
And they realized that that pissed people off.
- [36:49]
Katie Drummond
Yeah.
- [36:50]
Matt Bellany
And they just, it's a, it's an ask forgiveness mentality rather than ask permission. And the entertainment industry would like to change that default. And this has been a, I mean this goes all the way back to Napster. You know, this is, this has been the signif, the, the signatory issue of the entertainment and, and copyright industry for the past 25 years is you can't just take, you have to ask permission and sometimes permission comes with a fee. So that's what they're, they're trying to essentially lobby these companies to change the mentality there. And it's an uphill battle.
- [37:29]
Katie Drummond
I was about to say. I mean, do they. There is so much tech money now flooding into Hollywood AI companies and big tech is so pervasive and so powerful.
- [37:40]
Matt Bellany
Yeah.
- [37:41]
Katie Drummond
Does Hollywood have a shot at this one?
- [37:44]
Matt Bellany
It's really difficult. I'll give you a perfect example. The Motion Picture association of America, right. Is the lobbying group for the studios and they have a long history. One of their biggest fights over the past, you know, 80 years has been piracy. And that's their big issue. They spend all their lobbying and their money on. So SORA comes along, Right. And you would think this would be a four alarm fire for the mpaa, but guess who's a member of the NPA now. Amazon, of course. Yeah. Because they own mgm.
- [38:18]
Katie Drummond
They do.
- [38:19]
Matt Bellany
So everybody kept asking for where's the statement from the npaa? Where's the statement? And behind the scenes, Amazon wasn't going to sign off on an anti AI generative image statement. So they had to go back and forth. Netflix has mixed feelings about this. We know now that they were talking to Ben Affleck's company at the time, or we're thinking of. So it's just a very fraught problem for the industry because so much tech money is involved. The three biggest buyers of entertainment content right now are among the top six are Amazon, Netflix and Apple.
- [38:54]
Katie Drummond
And I have to ask you about Amazon because you have done some phenomenal reporting recently about a Sam Altman film, artificial, that I am very excited to see. But that Amazon, MGM suddenly dropped after spending a fair bit of money, $40 million to make the movie. Tell us more about that mess. How did the movie end up getting made? How did it get dropped and why?
- [39:20]
Matt Bellany
It's pretty simple. This project was shopped to the market. Amazon engaged on. It was interested in it. It was from a filmmaker, Luca Guadagnino, who they have had a relationship with. He made challengers for them and he made a Julia Roberts film last year called after the Hunt for Them and they wanted to do it and it was. They knew the script. I read the script and wrote about the script last summer and at the time I said, listen, this is a little dicey because it's a. It's an indictment of Sam Altman and a scary situation. It goes into that weekend when the co creators and everybody turned on Sam and he was kicked out of the company and then essentially got it back and it went on its path to where?
- [40:03]
Katie Drummond
I mean, that was like the super bowl at Wired in our newsroom. I mean, that was a wild weekend. Yeah.
- [40:08]
Matt Bellany
So it essentially drama dramatizes that event.
- [40:10]
Katie Drummond
Okay.
- [40:11]
Matt Bellany
And nobody looks good except for Ilya. He looks pretty good. He's painted as like the savior.
- [40:16]
Katie Drummond
That's really funny.
- [40:17]
Matt Bellany
And I've heard from people that that may not be.
- [40:19]
Katie Drummond
Yeah, I don't know if that's entirely true, but good for him.
- [40:22]
Matt Bellany
Whatever.
- [40:22]
Katie Drummond
Yeah.
- [40:22]
Matt Bellany
This is a movie that Amazon wanted to make. They make it and then all of a sudden in February, it's announced that they have a $50 billion deal with OpenAI. They are heavily in bed with that company now. So Mike Hopkins, the head of Prime Video, he looks at the finished product. Now they say that the product, the end movie is darker than what they initially envisioned. I haven't seen the end movie yet. I've been told that, yes, it is a dark movie, but. But that was on the page as well. And they got cold feet and they essentially ended up paying for someone else to release it. Neon, which is a traditional distributor, and they were. They released the Nora, the best picture winner. They came in and they got the movie for $0 up front. All they had to do was commit to spending $15 million to release it in theaters, which is what the filmmaker wanted. Amazon is essentially eating the rest of the cost with the hope that it will become a big box office hit and they will recoup their money. And they did that to get out of this situation. To not have a problem with Sam Altman.
- [41:34]
Katie Drummond
How unprecedented is that? I mean, that is corporate censorship. That is lighting money on fire. That is some real cowardice on the part of Amazon, among other things like that sounds insane to me. But you know this world so much better than I do. How weird is it that that all happened?
- [41:57]
Matt Bellany
It's rare. There was a miniseries about 15 years ago called the Kennedys that was critical of the Kennedy family and was going to be released by A and E, which is half owned by Disney and had some connections to the Kennedys. And they voiced their displeasure about it. And that miniseries was offloaded to the Reels channel, which is an independent cable channel owned by kind of a conservative rich guy. So that's an example where that happened. But it's. And there's examples all the time where studios just won't touch material because of how hot button it is. A perfect example was two years ago with the Apprentice, the Donald Trump movie.
- [42:41]
Katie Drummond
Right, right.
- [42:42]
Matt Bellany
And that was a Cannes movie that got a lot of good reviews at Cannes. It wasn't considered great, it was considered good. And the traditional studios just decided that it wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth poking Donald Trump and having a problem for their company. If they, you know, if they did this movie, they may. It may find an audience, it may not. It might get some Oscar nominations. It ended up getting two big Oscar nominations for a very tiny distributor, Briarcliffe, that had no problem doing this. But that's an example of the studio's kind of self censoring up front. But it's very rare to make a movie and then dump it.
- [43:23]
Katie Drummond
I guess I'm just sort of sitting here trying to wrap my head around can Hollywood still take shots at the tech industry? Can they still cover it or offer versions of Those stories with integrity, given how much tech money is now in the industry itself.
- [43:41]
Matt Bellany
It's a fascinating question. I mean, we're going to get an answer. This fall, Sony is releasing the Social Reckoning, right? Which is Aaron Sorkin's follow up to the Social, and it's based on the Facebook files. So that is a very critical story about Mark Zuckerberg. And from everything I've. And when I interviewed Sorkin, he explicitly connected it to January 6th. And not completely about that, but he makes a direct connection between the decisions that Facebook makes to focus on content that enrages people and divides people to the events of January 6th. So that's going to be something that I think will be controversial. And Sony is releasing that movie now. Sony doesn't have a streaming service. Sony is a Japanese company. They also were not one of the companies that settled with Donald Trump. I mean, if you look at what Paramount, Skydance has done, they have openly courted Trump. You look at Disney with the ABC News settlement with George Stephanopoulos. They paid Trump, I believe it was 15, $16 million. There's a lot of those companies were just not even interested in this kind of material. But it's a great question going forward and how willing Hollywood is going to be to take on the tech industry. Either it's big moguls or the industry in general.
- [45:06]
Katie Drummond
All right, another quick break. We'll be right back.
- [45:12]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
You know that feeling when you open your laptop in the morning and before you've even had coffee, You've already got 40 new emails, six new pings, and a browser with. Honestly, I've stopped counting the tabs. I used to think that was just what work was supposed to feel like. Faster, louder, more. And everyone kept telling me AI was going to fix it. But every AI tool I tried just became one more tab, one more app to explain myself to one more thing slowing me down. Then I found Superhuman Go. It's an AI chat that just lives on the side of your browser. It already knows what you're working on, so you're not starting from zero every time. You can draft an email, summarize a huge thread, even search across your other apps without ever leaving the page you're on. No new tabs, no context switching, no losing your place. That's AI that actually works with you, not on top of you. Check it out. Find out more@superhuman.com
- [46:13]
Katie Drummond
comprehensive, witty, speculative, critical, insightful, profound.
- [46:17]
David Remnick
Wide ranging.
- [46:18]
Katie Drummond
Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.
- [46:21]
David Remnick
I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour. My colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts, Thoughtful, exquisite,
- [46:36]
Katie Drummond
just, you know, real.
- [46:43]
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- [47:19]
Katie Drummond
I wanted to ask you one more question for the listeners. You've done some coverage about astroturfing astroturfed movie hype. You talked to Lane Brown, who wrote a great piece of for New York magazine on this subject. But essentially, this is the fact that the popularity and virality of movies and TV shows is increasingly manufactured and engineered to seem authentic, right? On social media. You talked earlier about social media becoming increasingly saturated with AI content. So it's really hard to figure out what's real and what's fake. It's also really hard to figure out what is authentically good or getting authentic buzz and what is just being paid for by, you know, a marketing firm to go viral. On social. I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about your understanding of that and also if you could offer some advice for all of our listeners and for me about how to tell whether something is good anymore.
- [48:17]
Matt Bellany
Amazing question.
- [48:18]
Katie Drummond
Thank you.
- [48:19]
Matt Bellany
It's. It's. My rule is trust nothing.
- [48:23]
Katie Drummond
Trust nothing.
- [48:24]
Matt Bellany
It's on social, trust nothing. Because there I. I did a column about that issue and I talked to Lane and I did a pod about it as well. And I had so many of these viral marketers reach out to me saying, hey, dude, why didn't you talk to me? I'm pumping out hundreds of thousands of positive and negative tweets like a week on this subject. I could have told you exactly how I do it. And they're not shy about it. If you, if you're interested in what the new Spider man movie is and whether it's good, and you go on social media, chances are the tweet you see will be paid for. And it's not like that's an entirely new thing going all the way back to the beginning of Hollywood and the publicity departments putting out positive stories about the actors and things like that. But what's different now is that the algorithms are designed to amplify this kind of content because they know the savvy marketers know how to game them and how to include the right words and how to be over the top. And your feeds will be filled up. If you are the kind of person who is interested in Spider man content, your feed will be filled up with this kind of stuff. And both positive and negative, there can be a campaign against a particular actor or movie. The Odyssey stuff is a perfect example. Elon decided he didn't like it, so it encouraged this whole cottage industry of trolls to whip up anti Odyssey sentiment. Now it turns out it didn't work and the film was able to overcome that, but a lot of films are not able to overcome that. And my, my rule is trust nothing. But then. So that's sort of an easy cop out. What do you trust? I go to Metacritic.
- [50:26]
Katie Drummond
Okay, love Metacritic.
- [50:27]
Matt Bellany
And if you look at the real reviewers on Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes is sort of garbage now.
- [50:33]
Katie Drummond
Well, you wrote about PR firms paying critics to artificially boost scores on Rotten Tomatoes, right?
- [50:39]
Matt Bellany
I mean, yeah, Rotten Tomatoes has a much more, they would argue, inclusive. I would argue, you know, democratic approach to critics where anyone can be a critic. Basically, on Rotten Tomatoes, they have a process to get there, but it's a lot of people that are quote, unquote, awards journalists. And that means that you are pumping up movies in order to get interviews with the stars. And Metacritic does a better job, I think, of weeding that stuff out. And they also have a 1 to 100 scale. So the thumbs up, thumbs down metric of Rotten Tomatoes is, is really reductive because it doesn't catch the nuance of a review. And often reviews that are mostly negative will be determined to be positive because there's one line in it that says, you know, Tom Holland is great and that's what they blurb and that's what the review is counted as. So this is going to be an unsatisfying answer. But I do use Metacritic and most of all, I don't trust the buzz on social media at all.
- [51:54]
Katie Drummond
It sounds like I'm just going to have to go see things myself. I'm just going to have to go watch more.
- [51:58]
Matt Bellany
I know. And beware, a lot of times you'll see like first reactions of a movie. Those are all sycophants. Those are, those are bloggers and people and influencers that are invited to a premiere with the expectation that they fawn over the movie afterwards. So and then the trade media picks up on those first reactions and pumps them out as if the movie is amazing. Go look at the first reactions to like Supergirl or He man or these movies that totally bombed. The first reactions were amazing because those are the influencers that are essentially paid to be there and treated like kings. And they put out these social media responses that then get aggregated to create a narrative that the studio wants. So critics are better than that. But even the aggregate critics score these, these influencers with agendas make it into those critics scores these days. So you can't even trust Rotten Tomatoes.
- [53:03]
Katie Drummond
A sad day when we can't even trust Rotten Tomatoes with our film reviews. That is very disappointing.
- [53:08]
Podcast Host / Interviewer
Matt.
- [53:08]
Katie Drummond
This was.
- [53:09]
Matt Bellany
It's like that scene on the studio where Seth Rogen's like, man, the Golden Globes used to mean something. Yes, like Rotten Tomatoes used to mean something.
- [53:17]
Katie Drummond
My husband still uses it all the time. I'm going to have to go home and tell him it's over. Matt.
- [53:21]
Matt Bellany
Metacritic is better. Metacritic is better.
- [53:25]
Katie Drummond
We'll check out.
- [53:25]
Matt Bellany
Not perfect, but better.
- [53:27]
Katie Drummond
This was fascinating. Thank you so much for your time.
- [53:29]
Matt Bellany
Yeah, no problem.
- [53:38]
Katie Drummond
The Big Interview is produced by Kate Osbourne, music and mixing by Pran Bandy, Fact checking by Samantha Spengler. And I am, of course, your host, Katie Drummond, Wired's global editorial director. Check back here on Thursday for the latest episode of Uncanny Valley, where Wired's writers and editors add you to their Slack channel. And if you like what you hear but want to also see us, check out video on Wired's YouTube and as always, please rate and review. Comprehensive, witty, speculative, critical, insightful, profound, Wide ranging. Hopefully doesn't take itself too, too seriously.
- [54:25]
David Remnick
I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [54:38]
Katie Drummond
Thoughtful, exquisite, just, you know, real.
- [54:46]
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- [55:17]
Matt Bellany
Evening Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car. I'll be moving in. Let's get started.
- [55:23]
Uber Eats / Carvana Advertiser
Uh, sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana.
- [55:27]
Indeed Advertiser
You what?
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Uber Eats / Carvana Advertiser
Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.
- [55:31]
Matt Bellany
So there's no.
- [55:32]
Servol Advertiser
No.
- [55:32]
Uber Eats / Carvana Advertiser
No buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice.
- [55:36]
Matt Bellany
I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it.
- [55:40]
Uber Eats / Carvana Advertiser
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