Ty Harper

This strategy might've worked at the onset of the DSLR revolution when there was still a lot of room for cam improvement around essential features. But given where we're at with cam tech and needing for very little to tell a fantastic story - that is no longer the case. Right now, we actually seem to be arriving at a point where AI will disrupt our dependency - not just on using cameras to capture the world - but on the idea that we ALWAYS need cams/audio devices to tell visual/auditory stories that can 'authentically' capture our real world. That last part to me is one of the big things being blurred/contested. Either way, if you play it out, this particular type of subscription-based strategy will likely only work/make sense for large media companies, who for legal/tax reasons, do not buy gear from the used market.
As someone who works for a large media corporation, what I am seeing/hearing first/second hand, is an increased interest in PTZ cams, along with AI apps that can cover multi-cam switching duties (a quick google search showed me one by CognitiveMill). In that case I can definitely see the subscription model working, bcuz PTZ's (from what I can tell) require no camera people per se - moreso tech support people who make sure these PTZ's are ready to go for any given multi-platform show, on any given day, and are on standby to troubleshoot any daily issues that come up. So in a case like that I definitely see the subscription model working - albeit at the expense of the loss/shrinking of jobs/shifts for camera people, etc. 

Kinda, sorta, but not really. Those are examples of one-off costs to unlock features permanently within the product, whether it stays with the original owner is sold off. Imagine having to pay monthly to have V-log in your GH5. Or pay Sony monthly to have shutter angle in your FX3. I'm actually OK sometimes paying for a firmware update past a certain point in the development cycle. It's logically how some manufacturers can recoup development costs on older tech they've moved on from. But, a subscription??? No way for me.

I legitimately think that the consumers will eventually abandon any manufacturer that tries this. And, if they all try it together, I see a mass revolt against new models and perhaps even a movement to “older” cameras. 

I recently bought a new treadmill and was amazed that the high-end ones required a subscription model.
I wouldn't be averse to buying a GX85 updated firmware, but to buy and re-buy the damned thing over and over again is ridiculous.
Yet another reason to snap out of the specifications trance that everyone seems to be in and focus on making better videos, rather than making the same videos with better spec'd equipment.

As a hobbyist whose day job intersects with the film world, I can say that there is no way I would ever buy into a subscription system - and I can say that because the two R5Cs with their current features are literally all I need for any and all present and future projects. I'll maybe get an R7/R6 MKII/R5 to fly on my RS3 Pro (bcuz the R5C cannot be used wirelessly with that gimbal) - and maaaybe a C70. But honestly I'm at the end of the road for camera purchases. But also I think the current cam selection is so amazing nowadays that a move to a subscription-based model will likely push even more people to the used market - and aside from storage media, every piece of gear (cam, lights, etc) I've ever bought in my hobbyist career (10+ years at this point) has been from the used market.

Yes I see that, but I can also see these types of jobs only being viable long enough until AI makes another leap and renders them obsolete. Pretty much a race to the bottom where the jobs that are paying/viable have little to do with being creative.

Yes I see that, but I can also see these types of jobs only being viable long enough until AI makes another leap and renders them obsolete. Pretty much a race to the bottom where the jobs that are paying/viable have little to do with being creative.

I'm sure all of the above. Point is people in those realms of media were already on edge and then along comes Sora. But to be clear, many already felt AI had the power to do this - so Sora is just confirming it. 

Maybe none!
https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/robots-run-the-show-as-swiss-radio-station-tests-ai-voices-for-a-day-1.6374928

Feel free to take a gander below.
Keep in mind I work as a producer on a talk program that directly intersects with terrestrial radio/tv, podcasts, pop journalism and film. There's also funding for several acclaimed/high end BIPOC tv shows/upcoming docs here in Canada that have either not been renewed or were not greenlit bcuz these cuts were on the horizon. Point is this was all happening BEFORE this Open AI/Sora news hit.
https://apnews.com/article/canada-media-job-cuts-newscasts-bell-media-d02a5dbf200e86e333c227dbceecac68
https://www.cp24.com/news/bell-ends-some-ctv-newscasts-sells-radio-stations-in-media-shakeup-amid-layoffs-1.6761001
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cbc-radio-canada-layoffs-budget-1.7048530
https://www.billboard.com/business/business-news/pitchfork-layoffs-restructuring-under-gq-1235583802/
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/21/buzzfeed-layoffs-complex-sale
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/acclaimed-cbc-bet-drama-the-porter-will-not-receive-a-second-season/article_748effd1-c40b-5c2b-b3c9-1a6eb132b1f1.html
 
 
 
 
 

Lol, this is a forum FILLED with people "obsessing" over much less important stuff - but also - we all respond to cultural shifts like this differently - so if this thread bothers you, feel free to move along. I do it all the time.

You literally went out of your way to let us know you disagree with the way people are "obsessing" over these recent advances in AI. If that isn't a sign that you're bothered I'm not sure what is...
 

All of this!
But also as I said in an earlier post - everyone has their own way of coping in a moment like this - so I'm trying my best to not judge or engage when that seems to be the case.

Is it ironic tho - or is it a sign of the sheer scale of changes coming to the labor market. But also, when you've got a mortgage and bills to pay at the end of the month - you tend to panic about tech advances like this. Some aren't experiencing this chewing the fat on a forum - I'm watching colleagues in the media world losing their jobs weekly. 

I think people brushing this aside are being a bit short-sighted, bordering on naive.
I'd say that what we've seen so far from text-to-image from machine learning has been -
Quick developing.  One month it's all fuzzy, the next month it's all smoothed out.  One month there are 11 fingers on each hand, a year later there are only 6.😅  In other words - it iterates fast. Unpredictable.  As even a tech-savvy person, it is really hard to predict what 'AI' (I don't like using that term) is going to be good at, and bad at - 🖐️! Far reaching. Useful.  I'm not a particular enthusiast, but I have used Adobe's AI tools on around 75% of the projects I have delivered as a freelancer over the past 6 months or so.  And that's just casually discovering things that make my life *tons* easier.  I also believe them to be reasonably ethical, or I wouldn't be using them. Similarly, I think the impact of this will be quick developing and unpredictable.  The biggest threat I think, may be that unpredictability itself.  It's going to be very difficult developing a workflow, without knowing whether it will become undermined by a much easier AI pathway at some not-so-distant point.
Example - I recently decided to really lean into doing 2.5d and true 3d animations from flat artworks as a client offering (for context, a lot of my clients are museums).  To really develop skills in this using tools like Cinema 4D, Projection 3D, DUIK, etc. will take a couple of years of learning as I go.  I very much doubt that AI will explode into use in that time, but certainly at some point just beyond that horizon I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a turnkey AI tool that offers very professional bespoke 3D animation from still images.  That's very up AI's street.
Aside from some very obvious things, like news gathering, I don't see anything that machine learning could not potentially impact within the foreseeable future.  This includes - editing a corporate film from start to finish from supplied footage almost instantly, with several versions to choose from; writing a compelling and original television series (yes, I honestly believe that machines will be doing this); creating photo-realistic footage of any location in the world that has been photographed more than 3 times, etc., etc.  
Of the course the nature of unpredictability is that just as equally, none of this might happen.  But I think the main point to make is that the scale of the threat (to professional livelihoods) is so profound, that anybody just blithely ignoring it has their head in the sand to my reckoning.

I hope you're right - but when I hear comments like this it makes me think alot of us are probably in for a big reality check on the impact this will have on mainstream content. I'd also say that we already have ample signs that there is indeed a huge appetite for content that isn't human. It's called cartoons, animation, CGI, etc. I'm not sure of the history of animation's rise but if there was a backlash to that tech - it obviously didn't last. Also I'll say it again: my 5 year-old will not have these moral attachments to human vs non-human content - and it is them and future kids that will be driving all of this. 
But again, I hope you're right.

Perhaps the critical concept is that AI is calculators trained with only human input data.
This whole thing is like when people learned anatomy.  
At first people thought that we couldn't possibly understand how the body worked because it was made by God.  Over many hundreds of years we've basically worked out more and more of the organic chemistry and various principles etc, and now no-one who is familiar with modern medicine would question our ability to understand the physical body.
Now comes AI, and we're back to saying that we couldn't possibly understand or replicate what it is to be human, because we're etherial magical special and knowable only to God.  I think that line of thinking will suffer the same fate, and will suffer it at thousands of times the pace.

I mean I'm not really trying to argue about all of this. I think we're all gna cope with a moment like this in different ways. What matters is we're aware that it's happening and we aren't naive about what it might mean for many of us and/or our peers' livelihoods.  

Reality TV is not even 'reality' and clearly cares little for the tenets of JSP, so I would argue that format will embrace AI with the quickness and you'll have AI-based characters that viewers are rooting for...

Sorry but anyone who's saying this looks sh*tty must not have seen the original Will Smith spaghetti one they had a year ago. THAT was sh*tty - this new one is no where near perfect, but sh*tty is just a ridiculous descriptor of something that is still developing. It is imo good enough for us to understand the implications for the art-based labor industry.

This is vastly underestimating the quality of AI based video in the near future. You must see that the tech we're seeing/talking about right now will be capable of reproducing imagery that is stunningly life like. The only thing being removed from the equation moving forward is our role in the capture process. But even that is not true - because this AI tech stands on the sum total legacy of everything humans have captured of the world to date. One thing that is humbling about AI-based video/audio etc, is that it is telling us that even our physical existence can be reduced to 1s and 0s.
There were/are human economic systems within which something like AI would/can be used in non-exploitative ways towards human beings. We unfortunately do not exist within one of those system at the moment. 

Agreed. As you say, if people want to use cams and other traditional forms of real life capture for home/family use, no one will stop them. But it's unlikely that media/film production companies in the future will be hiring/paying people who offer camera capture, set design, lighting, etc, etc, as a sole and primary service - which is really what we're talking about. Also, the AI approach won't be seen as a 'forgery' to mass consumers in most circumstances. The ones intended for insidious deep-fake purposes? Yes, of course. But most AI-based video will be seen/consumed as a valid representation of real life ala a painting. It will also be impossible to tell the difference in the future. That's just based on how far a company like Open AI has come in a year. Also, these distinctions we're making around real vs fake will be irrelevant to the vast majority of humans born into it from here on out. All realms of commerce have experienced crushing human labor disruptions in the past and present times (car manufacturing being the most obvious example). What makes this stunning and unique is that it is happening to the realm of commerce (i.e art-based commerce) that we instinctively know humans will continue to do whether they are paid for it or not. You can't say the same for alot of other realms of the human labor economy. So it will be, imo, one of the most poignant blows in the history of human labor to date. 

Also forgot to mention that I think journalism/reporting/news gathering, where the facts of an event are a priority, are spaces where traditional cams/audio, etc will still matter. At least in publicly funded broadcast vs private broadcasting companies. But both realms will be tested by advertisers and waning streams of investment to support those journalistic standards and practices.

I don't think any style or medium or approach is ever rendered completely obsolete. I think the ones you can't monetize just become much less sensible to use for that particular purpose. Whether we're talking reel to reel tape for audio production (which I started with!), OG film cameras, vinyl, cassettes, etc. These become super niche things that creators pull out to return to a "warmer", "more analog" feel. So one day using digital cameras and capturing actual human beings will very likely fall into that category in the media economy - particularly Hollywood.
As far as what you're saying about documentaries. Well that is a world I have been thinking about the most, as a hobbyist and sometimes professional.  I think it will be a mix of what you're saying. For example, I'm doing a family doc about my parents. How they met, fell in love, moved to Canada from the Caribbean, etc. I've already filmed the main interviews with them. But it is clear that there isn't alot of historic video footage of them as kids or as a young couple. So this is totally where AI will transform the possibilities for this project. Because I could take archival photos of them from those periods and use AI to create video representations of those photos in tandem with what they are describing from their past in the video interviews I've already captured. Even create AI video scene of dialogue between them as a young couple based on their accounts. Will it seem strange to them. Maybe? But I'm more inclined to think it will be surreal and fascinating. For me personally, I have no video footage of myself as a kid - and I can tell you I would really appreciate using tech like this for that purpose. 
All that said, I agree that weddings and realtime captures of life and current history will likely still depend on some tyoe of traditional raw video capture. But even in that instance I think there's a scenario where you now use something compact like a phone (with much less interest in thinks like the highest resolution, dynamic range, etc - bcuz AI won't need that kind of stuff) just to give AI the raw data to work with, and then AI reproduces that raw capture perfectly and with even more 'detail' AND gives you infinite angle options to build what we now call a 'multicam' doc of an event. 
I would even think that you could get alot of that done with photos of the event and the people there as well.
If anything audio might be the thing we still need to continue to capture the way we do it now - but again, you prob wouldn't need to worry about having the ultimate quality either - just some raw data for AI to work with.
So yeah, there are ways that traditional tech will likely still be used - but it will prob be vastly minimized and also very obvious that AI tech will be driving the bulk of the creative process. 
 
 
 
 

I don't think a photo real animation with no back end labour can be described as just a better animation tool. Current animation tools, critically, take years of practice and hundreds of paid hours to create each individual work. A production going from "writer, director, and 10,000 hours of professional, lifelong technical artists" to "writer, director, and a 2 month subscription to OpenAI" is, in my opinion, something to pay attention to and expect disruption from, whether you categorize it as a "just a better tool" or not.
 
Switching perspectives a little, these tools are absolutely perfect for hobbyists like me. I'm never going to hire artists, so my productions go from crap CGI to amazing CGI, and no one loses a job. There are no downsides! If that's the angle you're coming from, then I agree with you.
However, for anyone making a living off of video work, there's a very very large chance that the amount of money that anyone is willing to pay for ANY kind of creative content creation is going to decrease, fast.