GenAI Video As a New Form
Not Just a Cheaper Way to Make Movies
Starting April 2025, all full posts, including archived posts, will be available on my Substack, The Mediator.
Twenty years ago, I wrote a research report arguing why internet video wasn’t a threat to traditional TV. Besides being wrong, it suffered from a failure of imagination. It equated the internet with being a new way to transport packages of cable networks. Among other things, I didn’t anticipate that the internet would birth new forms, notably including social video and live-streaming, which now represent ~25% of all video viewing in the U.S.
In Hollywood today, much of the discussion about GenAI centers around how you can use it to make movies and TV shows more efficiently:
- Which jobs are the most vulnerable to being replaced?
- When will it be possible, both technically and legally, to use it to replace some principal photography, as opposed to just used in pre- and post-production?
- How much will it really reduce costs?
- Will consumers embrace it and, if so, in what genres?
These are important and valid questions, but they all implicitly suffer from the same failure of imagination. They assume that the primary application of GenAI video is making the same old stuff in a new way. Over time, all new media move beyond mere imitation of older forms. Creators come to understand the unique properties of the new medium and use it to make entirely new things. The same will happen with GenAI video.
It’s hard to predict precisely how the technology will evolve or what will take hold with consumers. It will take time to figure it out. But by exploring the unique properties of AI video models, we can make some educated guesses.
Tl;dr:
- Viewing a new medium as merely a way to imitate an old form — also called skeuomorphism — is a common mistake in media.
- Most of the discussions about GenAI in Hollywood today also narrowly regard it as a new way to make TV shows or movies for less.
- But GenAI will birth new forms too. It’s impossible to predict these with precision, but by exploring the unique properties of GenAI video, we can make educated guesses.
- Cheap: GenAI will be orders of magnitude cheaper than traditional production, which will enable far more risk and experimentation; broader representation; A/B testing at scale; and fan creation.
- Dynamic: It can be rendered dynamically and, eventually real-time. This will open up contextual, personalized, interactive and possibly emergent or infinite stories.
- 3D: It isn’t tethered to the fixed perspective of each still frame, meaning that it will be possible to experience video from an unlimited number of perspectives, including within the action itself. Every viewer can be the cinematographer.
- Unconstrained: It also isn’t bound by physics or reality, meaning it will be capable of impossible shots, alternative realities, physics-defying environments and a lot of other stuff that’s hard to conceptualize.
- The scarcest resources in media are consumers’ time and attention. These new forms will inevitably compete for both. That’s an opportunity for those who understand it and a risk for those who don’t.
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