The Medium identifies a few key trends each fiscal quarter that reveal the most important tensions and seismic shifts in the rapidly and dramatically changing media marketplace. The key trends help you answer a simple question: "What's next for media, and where's it all going? How are the pieces lining up for business models to evolve, succeed, or fail?"

Read the three key trends The Medium will be focused on in Q3 2023. This essay focuses on "Artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing applications and services are increasingly dictating content consumption."

A short essay today. No essay on Monday because of the holiday. I may curate some articles and send out those, only, as I catch up over the weekend on articles the past two weeks. When I was at Viacom, Labor Day was always when the big management changes were announced. So it's a reasonable bet a major management change will be announced somewhere in the media industry.

The use of Artificial intelligence (AI) is a dicey topic in the Hollywood strikes. There are two angles on it.

First, the Writers Guild of America initially proposed banning AI-produced work from being considered “source” or “literary” material and to prevent any writing covered under its contract from being used to train AI. 

Second, as Variety recently reported:

Hollywood actors’ union SAG-AFTRA is not trying to ban AI outright, as some high-profile members stand to profit from licensing their likeness rights. But the union is insisting that performers must give “informed consent” and that the right to use AI on additional projects must be separately bargained.

We have not heard much about AI's threat to Hollywood actors in video games, for which 2,500 performers are represented by a separate SAG-AFTRA contract for interactive work (for comparison, there are over 170,000 dues-paying members of SAG-AFTRA). That contract was negotiated in 2017 and AI poses its own set of threats there, as a recent Los Angeles Times article highlighted:

“Although the technology to reuse a likeness or modify a voice has existed for years, actors say that AI ups the ante because it can scrape more information more efficiently and potentially turn it into a plausible clone of an actor, combine actors’ work or pass as a new, ersatz artist.”

The recent passing of actor Lance Reddick this past March reflected the complicated dynamics around this issue. Reddick was well-known for roles in “The Wire”,“John Wick”, and “Bosch.

In the gaming world, Lance Reddick was well-known as the voice of Commander Zavala in the Destiny franchise, both in the console and live-action versions. Reddick’s success as Zavala highlighted the best of what Hollywood voice actors can expect from opportunities in the growing gaming industry. But, AI and the gaming industry's competitiveness pose a threat to that legacy. 

Key Takeaway

Gamers' poignant tributes to the passing of actor Lance Reddick's in Destiny 2 suggested live-action gaming may be compelling for actors as an opportunity after Peak TV's demise. But in practice, Reddick's gaming fandom also captures the sum of all fears of striking WGA and SAG-AFTRA members.

Total words: 1,000

Total time reading: 4 minutes