Studios Seek High-Paying AI Positions Despite Ongoing Strikes
By Movieguide® Contributor
Studios continue to hire for AI-related positions despite heavy pressure from actors and writers to stem the use of the technology.
The use of AI in the entertainment industry has emerged as a key issue in the ongoing actors’ and writers’ strikes. Both groups want the use of AI in their fields to be banned as they fear the technology could replace a worrying number of jobs. Their cries, however, appear to be falling on deaf ears.
Disney—a company that has become one of the villains of the strike—is currently expanding its “imagineering” team, the group in charge of their theme parks. One role is for an R&D position focused on generative AI; the position calls for someone with the “ambition to push the limits of what AI tools can create and understand the difference between the voice of data and the voice of a designer, writer or artist.”
The role will “collaborate with third party studios, universities, organizations, and developers to evaluate, adopt and integrate the latest generative AI.” The job’s base salary starts at $180,000 a year.
Another AI position at Disney calls for a machine-learning engineer in the Disney Streaming Advanced Research division, “responsible for creating AI-enabled solutions for Disney+, Star+ and ESPN+.” The position will use AI to “work on advanced personalization efforts involving digital avatars.”
Disney is not alone in their continuation into the AI space. The Intercept uncovered an AI Production Manager job at Netflix, which offers up to $900,000 annually.
“Our business is driven by Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, which fuels innovation in content creation and acquisition, personalization, payment processing and other revenue-centric animatics,” the listing explains.
Prime Video has an AI-related opening that pays $300,000. “Want to define the next big thing in localizing content, enhancing content, or making it accessible using state-of-the-art Generative AI and Computer Vision tech? This is for you!” the listing reads.
Apple TV+, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Comcast also have similar positions, each offering high salaries.
These high-paying AI positions come as the studios claim that the salary increases writers and actors are demanding are unreasonable.
“So [Netflix offers] $900k/yr per soldier in their godless AI army when that amount of earnings could qualify thirty-five actors and their families for SAG-AFTRA health insurance is just ghoulish,” BLACK MIRROR actor Rob Delaney told The Intercept. “Having been poor and rich in this business, I can assure you there’s enough money to go around; it’s just about priorities.”
Despite the effort of the strikers to eliminate the use of AI, jobs using this technology are some of the most stable in the industry. AI positions were largely spared during a round of mass layoffs across the industry earlier this year. As far as the studios are concerned, AI is here to stay.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Major studios are seeking AI specialists as striking writers and actors express concern over the technology’s rising role in the entertainment industry.
“They propose that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get paid for one day’s pay and their company should own that scan, their image, their likeness, and to be able to use it for the rest of eternity in any project they want with no consent and no compensation,” Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, chief negotiator for the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, explained.
AMPTP spokesperson Scott Rowe responded, saying that these claims were “false” and that the background scans would only be used on actors who were already employed on a project, adding, “Any other use requires the background actor’s consent and bargaining for the use, subject to a minimum payment.”
Writers are equally worried about AI, pointing to the growing popularity of ChatGPT, software that can generate text in response to specific queries from users.
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