Welcome to the AI For Humans newsletter!

By now, I’m assuming most of you have heard about Bytedance’s Seedance 2.0 AI video model.

After all, I covered it here in a special edition of the newsletter last week and we made it the lead story in this week’s AI For Humans episode.

Not impressed yet? Well, here’s a little video I made about what can be done with it outside of those IP and celebrity violations (see more below) that you should watch.

Ugh, sometimes the bags under one’s eyes just exist. Where’s AI when you need it??

As suspected, Bytedance has officially come out and said that they are adding in significant protections for IP holders and real-life personalities.

But, if you saw any of the celebrity-centric videos, you understand now what’s actually possible behind the scenes with these models.

And, if you’ve worked in the entertainment industry for any amount of time, seeing something of this GFX quality come from a prompt should shock you:

So… is Hollywood over? What happens next?

Well, it’s complicated…

Please support AI For Humans by learning about our sponsors below:

Everyone talks about AI, but no one has the time to learn it. So, we found the easiest way to learn AI in as little time as possible: The Rundown AI.

It's a free AI newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on the latest AI news, and teaches you how to apply it in just 5 minutes a day.

Plus, complete the quiz after signing up and they’ll recommend the best AI tools, guides, and courses — tailored to your needs.

Sign up to start learning.

It’s no surprise that Hollywood quickly condemned Seedance 2.0.

Disney & Paramount have both issued cease-and-desist orders. Statements from the Motion Picture Association of America and SAG/AFTRA contain harsh language with the SAG/AFTRA statement going so far as to say:

We have seen this playbook before. Release, then nerf. Make a lot of people mad.

When Sora 2 launched, we saw a similar uproar from the Hollywood powers that be, so much so that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman changed their policy just a few days later.

However, OpenAI did talk with the major unions (specifically SAG/AFTRA) and gave actors the opportunity to opt out ahead of release.

What’s different here is, whether they intended this or not, Bytedance let the world know that not only do they have all these real, human people in their training data but…

Essentially they can re-create them, at will, doing almost anything.

Argue all you want about how irresponsible these videos might be (and I’d agree with you), but seeing them, you immediately understand something important.

These companies already have all the video data they need to change everything.

The most important thing to realize from our little glimpse behind the curtain into what’s actually possible is the fact that we’re entering an entirely new paradigm.

Very soon, potentially in months not years, full-blown, high-end video creation will be possible without any physical production at all.

You, the AI For Humans consumer, know that Kevin and I have been gesturing to this for a while. But it always felt slightly out of reach.

Now, it’s nearly here.

This is going to send shockwaves through a lot of different facets of creative society. Studios, equipment manufacturers, content development… are all about to be upended.

And legally, it’s a quagmire.

Bytedance’s video data likely comes from Tiktok (as Google’s comes from YouTube) and lots of it they have very little control over. Lawyers will feast.

But seeing the tool in action, you cannot help but feel like Deadpool writer Rhett Reese, that the way things were done before is over to a large extent.

There are things you, the human, can do about all of this.

First, if you feel like you must fight it, I won’t blame you. There will be a significant rising tide of human-only production and huge blowback.

But I’ve written extensively about the idea of ‘micro-studios’ and the potential for very small groups of people to create significant video work using these tools.

Love this newsletter? Forward it to one curious friend. They can join in one click.

And, like I said, I really do believe there is an opportunity here.

Once we pass by this initial moment of shock at what the machines have inside of them, most people will forget about this until the next big AI video launch.

But the real winners here, whether you’ve worked in Hollywood already, always aspired to or perhaps just had a thought you might at one point, will be those who understand now what these tools can make.

Change, especially change foisted upon us, is hard.

I’m personally a living embodiment of that.

Once a “successful” late night TV producer, I left to explore weird and strange new grounds, only to discover upon my return the landscape had forever changed.

The creator economy and podcasts made new endeavors in late night (and studio talk shows at large) untenable. Jobs shifted significantly. Many have been lost and more are still being shredded.

Showrunners, at least at the scale that I had worked, were not as needed.

But out of that change came a lot of new shows that I like. Way more than there were before. And those shows, too, provided jobs for creative people to do what they loved.

My hope here is we’ll see the same sort of blossoming when it comes to scripted entertainment; new stories arise and hopefully new stars as well.

All that said, I do want to tell those of you who are personally feeling this deeply, those who feel that ‘what do I do now’ sort of feeling, that it will be ok.

Life does go on and, perhaps, might open a new door.

As always, feel free to reach out directly and see you next Friday for a new episode!

-Gavin

This week’s AI For Humans: Our First Takes on Seedance 2.0👇

If you’re an old-school fan of AI For Humans, you might remember us covering the very early AI agent experiment Smallville a while back.

Smallville took a bunch of AI personalities and let them interact in a Sims-esque environment, watching AI behavior with some fascinating takeaways.

Now the researchers responsible for that experiment have launched a new company (with $100m in funding) to do Smallville-like experiments on a much larger scale.

As a ginormous fan of everything Sims (SimCity was my first love), I’m legitimately excited to play in this world and give my little AIs all sorts of things to figure out.