Only a day after Lionsgate introduced its partnership with AI firm Runway, UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer known as the deal “concerning” for artists.
“The deal that was announced … by Lionsgate, where they … made this connection with an AI company where they’re going to give this company tremendous access to all of their library — that’s concerning,” Zimmer advised Monetary Instances LA bureau chief Christopher Grimes at FT’s Enterprise of Leisure convention on Thursday. “If I’m an artist and I’ve made a Lionsgate movie, now suddenly that Lionsgate movie is going to be used to help build out an LLM for an AI company, am I going to be compensated for that?”
The partnership, inked Wednesday, will create AI fashions based mostly off the studio’s archive movie and TV content material and is “fundamentally designed to help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors and other creative talent augment their work.”
Zimmer talked about that his mates at Lionsgate is likely to be “annoyed” by his remarks, however he shook it off, saying, “That’s show business.” When Grimes requested what his shoppers’ considerations had been relating to AI, Zimmer listed some “basic concerns” — together with, “Is my work going to get stolen? Is my likeness going to get stolen? Is my job going to be replaced? Am I going to be replaced?”
On the flip facet, Zimmer detailed the “opportunity that comes with AI to help us be more efficient and thoughtful about the way we make shows and market shows and make movies and market movies,” which he stated can be “really great for storytellers,” inside the correct authorized framework.
“I think there’s open-mindedness and thoughtful conversations taking place,” he conceded. “But how do we get there? Who gets there first, and whether the spirit of those conversations is truly open and honest and fair, we are not going to know for a bit.”
Zimmer additional famous the advanced dynamic between each defending artists now who’re involved by synthetic intelligence and nurturing artists — who he identifies as “AI endemic” — that make the most of the device inside their work, saying, “If we try to stop progress, we get run over by progress.”
“If Steven Spielberg, today, were in high school at 14 … making his first film, he might be making it … using AI prompts, and we don’t want that guy to feel like, ‘Oh, sorry, you’re a criminal,’” Zimmer stated. “We want that guy to be rewarded for his excellence in utilizing the tools that are available him today.”
