“It’s Not Going Anywhere”: AI Experts Discuss The Technology And Its Future Impact On Storytelling — KVIFF Industry Panel

EXCLUSIVE: The direct effect Artificial Intelligence may have on our lives and the future of storytelling was the topic discussed during the central keynote on the final day of the Eastern Promises industry program at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

“We have a new player in town, and it’s not going anywhere,” veteran creative consultant Tatjana Samopjan said, summarizing the position of AI in our lives. 

In the panel hosted by Deadline as part of the Industry Days program, Samopjan was joined by Gerhard Maier, program director and co-founder of Seriencamp, and Julia Schafdecker, attorney at SKW Schwarz.

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Introducing the lengthy session, Maier identified the two main forms of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and narrow AI, as well as their structural differences.

“Artificial General Intelligence is what people like Elon Musk and the heads of Google are talking about right now. This is about trying to create a machine that thinks like a human,” Maier said.

“It is the big holy grail of artificial intelligence research. Depending on who you talk to, it’s either a couple of months away or decades. People don’t know. And the thing we have most likely interacted with for the last few years — and ChatGPT and Midjourney are just two instances of how it is used — is narrow AI. This is mostly algorithms that are trained to do a certain task.”

The most important thing to remember when discussing AI, Maier later concluded, is that the technology is growing “exponentially,” meaning its level of sophistication is increasing rapidly. This untapped growth will, of course, have a direct impact on industry as well as our personal lives. For one, Maier added, there will be what he described as a “job crunch.”

“A lot of jobs and tasks that have been laid out to a couple of specialists or specialized departments can be made more efficient and are made redundant,” Maier said. “I have already seen this with people who worked for big sales companies who used to employ three people to create pitch papers for international markets. This is now done by one person, and there’s no graphic designer involved. There’s no photo guy involved anymore. It’s all done by one person. This also applies to editing, art direction, and many other fields where one person can do the job that before maybe two or three or four persons did.”

As we’ve reported, the reality of a so-called job crunch has been one of the most pressing issues on the bargaining table for the WGA during its protracted contract negotiations with the studios. The WGA wants safeguards introduced to prevent studios from using AI to generate new scripts from previous works. 

A few years ago, it would have seemed inconceivable that AI could replicate the work of TV and film writers, but the rise of ChatGPT and other services that can scrape through decades of content and recreate has shown that it might be closer than ever. However, Samopjan argued in her unique intervention that this exact process is what makes the technology ill-suited to create for humans.

“If you drink the best wine out there, you’ll have the best taste. But if you drink a liter or two every day, are you a connoisseur or an alcoholic? We are work story-holics. And, paradoxically, consuming too many stories will not make you a great storyteller,” she said.

“The way to deal with AI later is to get good at stepping into reality. To not rely on stories, but from time to time, live fully. And we’d see that whatever lived experience we have will have enough ambivalence, nuance, paradox, and confusion in itself that will provide a rich source material to create something original.”

She later added: “The best artists are the closest we have to mystics. The best artists see through the bullshit. They see through the constructions of their own mind. It’s an ability that needs to be maintained in the age of technology.”

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