This Blog Should Not Exist, Part 3.07: Kiss Your Entertainment Industry Goodbye

(Before anyone disputes this, I am in full support of the actors and writers, and believe that a strike is the only way they get heard...)

There's a problem with that -- it needs to matter that they are heard.  And I'm not sure that it does matter or can matter, outside of one and only one recourse.

For those not following along:  After a 12-day cooling off period and the (false) hopes that there was an ounce of desire for negotiation, SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, went on strike this morning for the first joint writers and actors strike in Hollywood and New York, etc. since the 1960's.

And many understand openly that this is an existential fight.

I agree, and that's why I am not optimistic about them going forward, sans an immediate court fight.

There has been no material desire by the studios and their chiefs to negotiate with the Writers Guild of America, their strike now entering it's 12th week.

There's a very simple reason -- and it's not all of the other issues such as streaming residuals for the fast-growing Free Ad-Supported Television streaming services (FAST -- like Pluto, etc.).  Those numbers can be eventually figured out.

What is different about this is that, to many of these studios, etc., the day is rapidly approaching, if not here already, that neither the writers nor the actors will be further required.

And what could do this?

Artificial Intelligence.

I have spoken several times of AI, starting with what I felt was a rather innocuous and entertaining nature of AI, from an America's Got Talent act Metaphysic.

I would like you to (re)acquaint yourself with that before we continue, because that was over a year ago, and you can see the available technology there and then.

Between ChatGPT for the writers and this for the actors, there may be no further material need for either in the immediate future of the entertainment industry.

One of the proposals that the studios have placed on the table is that a background actor need only appear for one more day (to be scanned into AI databases), and, for that one day's pay, be used in perpetuity as an artificial situation.  The concept of an "extra" (which many in the industry only see as a prop which can eat...) would be a thing of the past.

But I think the studios and the like are far, far more nefarious.  Consider the following:

• A market in which all of the "Fast And Furious" types who turn the roads and streets of this country into their personal playgrounds in "real life" now have the opportunity, through AI, to be placed, through digital replacement, into a "Fast and Furious" movie (my anonymous friend, in a very prescient manner, would call this "Fast You").
• Another market in which, with one replacement or both, a fan, "stan", or stalker could (at least in AI) sleep with any celebrity of his or her dreams.  Extrapolate that, in the last case, as you see fit.  Forget creepy -- we're getting to downright dangerous here.   
• One thing which came up yesterday in discussions on the subject as the strike began:  There would be no material such thing, anymore, as a celebrity's reputation.  You can put any celebrity you choose, on video, into any compromising, dangerous, or oppositional situation you choose.
• A Jew supporting Hitler.
• A Democratic woman espousing the virtues of MAGA...
• I could go on for some time.

And here's the two worst parts of it...

• I believe they already have enough "material", even on the famous, to do everything they need to do.
• And, as I've said before on this blog, I already believe major portions of Americana (the NFL with Damar Hamlin cough) are already using this technology.

And that's why I believe the actors have only one real recourse:  To lawyer up and sue the studios now to prevent the usage of this material for not only what the studios would get from them in the future, but for what they have now.

Otherwise, I don't see this getting settled.  Now, in the near future, or ever.

This, to me, is not unlike the 1994-95 baseball strike or the attempted 2011 NFL lockout -- both, I believe, fully orchestrated for a long time to rewrite the system in the owners' favor and only stopped, in both cases, through the courts.