Washington can’t stop Hollywood’s AI apocalypse, Justine Bateman says

Filmmaker Justine Bateman predicts artificial intelligence will be the end of movies and television as we know it.

A former actress known for her Emmy-nominated role on “Family Ties,” Bateman has made headlines in recent weeks preaching about Hollywood’s looming AI apocalypse. She fears the technology will gut the industry’s artistic expression and experimentation, and put people out of work.

Her message is now resonating with a larger audience as unionized writers and actors continue their strike against studios and streamers — a protest driven in part by the fear that the unfettered use of AI will render them irrelevant to the industry’s future. Writers and studios are slated to resume talks on Friday.

Bateman believes it’s too late to save Hollywood, but she also said that shouldn’t stop Washington from trying. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear more from Bateman, listen to today’s episode of the POLITICO Tech podcast.

Steven Overly: You've been advising SAG-AFTRA on AI issues during the negotiations with studios and streamers. AI just seems like a very unstoppable force. Is that the goal here?

Bateman: I agree with you. I do not think that I can stop it. I don't think that anything I'm writing about can stop what I see as the crushing of our industry from generative AI’s inclusion. So yeah, I agree with you.

I'm based here in Washington, and I read that you actually testified in the Senate in 2008 at a hearing on net neutrality. I don't know how much you're following the AI regulation debates here in D.C., but I wonder if there's anything you'd like to see lawmakers do on this issue.

One thing that would just be great is if there was absolutely a requirement that you had to say AI was involved in this. I mean, with fresh produce, if you want a stamp that says it's organic, you have to hold certain standards. I've established this CREDO23, which is going to be a stamp available to filmmakers who want to tell the audiences that they made a “normal film.” They didn't use generative AI.

They used VFX minimally and CGI minimally, and they used a union crew. It's something really simple. I wish it wasn't something we even had to focus on, but at least something like that, it'll give the audience confidence, and not feel like, “Oh, wait a minute, did I just watch a fake person? Or did I just watch something that was manipulated, and the actor didn't really say those things?”

Transparency, right? People don’t want to feel duped. 

That's it, you know, because there's gonna be a lot of that.

I know you went back to school to study computer science. What do you understand or feel you understand about AI and, really, these tech changes in general that are shaping the entertainment industry, that maybe your peers either don't understand or are just catching up to as part of the strikes?

One of the advantages of having a computer science degree is that you understand how coders think about things. And one way that coders think about things is a little bit of set it and forget it. There are some apps that work like that, some platforms that work like that. TikTok, Twitter — though I don't know what Twitter's turning into — Instagram, Facebook. They're not having to fill the platform with a bunch of stuff. They're not having to fill the shelves, other people do. You and I, we continually post and put photos up and videos up and we're filling the shelves.

Now imagine you're Amazon, you know, the video aspect of Amazon, Netflix, Apple TV+. You're a tech company, but you can't set it and forget it. And I can imagine that's at least slightly frustrating for them. They'd love to be, I'm sure, like TikTok or Twitter or something where they've built it and then just put the stuff in. But instead, they have to make deals to acquire this content — I hate the word content — but to acquire these films and series. And then on top of that, when those licensing deals become a little awkward or expensive, then they started making their own stuff, and now they've got to deal with directors and writers and producers and actors and locations and fringes and, you know, pension and health payments. That's a different experience than just being a straight-up tech company that has a platform.

So in that sense, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't want all-AI films that are customized to somebody's viewing history and even have an up-charge for people who want to get themselves scanned or just upload a photo of themselves and put themselves in the film. Because that way you can not only be selling them these all-AI films that are customized to their viewing habits or their viewing history, but that's a set it and forget it kind of thing.

It's fascinating, the idea that you kind of have this make-your-own-story approach to entertainment, or you can put yourself in shows or generate entirely unique movies or series based on your preferences. It does mirror social media in that we all have customized Twitter feeds or Facebook pages based on algorithms of our interest. 

In my mind, what has set TV and film apart is the notion that we have a common viewing experience, right? You watch the season finale or everyone goes to see the same movie, and then you argue over whether it was good or not. We may now see two versions of a movie and we may both think it's good because it was just totally tailored to whatever the data thinks our preferences are.

Yeah, that's a good point. Not only with these new films that are tailored to your viewing history, but also they have the technology now to go back into, you name the film, “Citizen Kane,” and tailor it to you. Give you a new version of “Citizen Kane,” give me a different version of “Citizen Kane.”

That, to me, it's so wrong on so many levels. First off, it eliminates what you just said, being able to talk about a shared experience, even though we are experiencing that film at different times. It completely rapes the filmmaker and everybody who is involved in it by destroying what they created. And by doing all of this, but using all this generative AI in entertainment, you're never going to see anything new.

I believe that artists are the tubes through which God, the universe, magic, whatever you want to call it, comes through into society. And you've seen it throughout history. The way certain paintings or pieces of music or movies, sometimes they reflect society, but a lot of times it goes the other way, it changes things.

It challenges you.

It challenges you. And by bringing generative AI into the arts, you cut that off, and suddenly you're only breathing circulated air. That's it, you’re never getting anything new.

Is there a way for the government to push back against some of this? Whether that's companies using AI to replace workers or even something like legal protections for creative works used by AI, I'm wondering what way the government can get involved here that feels or seems productive in your mind.

A couple of things I'd like to see that would really help. And like I said, I don't know that anything can be done to stop this destruction I think is coming. But I would love to see the Federal Trade Commission get more involved with breaking up some of these monopolies.

I'd love to see a return to the Paramount decrees, which separated the studios from owning the cinemas and the theaters, and the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules rules that we had up through the mid-1990s that separated a network from producing its own work.

When you had that separation, at least with the Fin-Syn rules, you're able to do a lot of original television programs that the showrunners could shop around to all the different networks and make them bid against each other. And there was a lot of originality during that span of time. I'd love to see the Fin-Syn rules come back, so like Netflix can either be a producer or distributor, not both.

And the other thing I'd like to see is the Copyright Office absolutely descend on these video-generative AI companies. In my mind, if they have fed in 100 years of film and television history, or you know, TV doesn't go back that far, but essentially 100 years of filmed entertainment, that's the largest copyright violation in the history of the United States.

The Copyright Office is sort of grappling with that in real time. I have one final question for you. It might be the hardest question, though. I've definitely heard loud and clear that art and AI don't go together. If I were to challenge you to find one positive about the use of AI in entertainment, what would that be?

I will say that I've seen it used in the vein of experimental video and, in that sense, you see how strange and trippy the results are. That's interesting for experimental video. But I feel like incorporating generative AI into film is being done by people who don't even understand what film and series are for. Some of your favorite films, or maybe some films that changed your life, after generative AI takes over our industry, you're not gonna have films like that anymore.

Annie Rees contributed to this report. 

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