Media Execs, Tech Vets And Legal Experts Debate AI’s Impact At CES

Saying that AI was discussed at CES last week is a bit like saying oxygen was breathed during the giant tech confab. There was simply no way of avoiding the topic.

For Hollywood, which has been unsettled by the rise of the technology over the past couple of years, the conversation swung from near-utopian levels of optimism to deep-seated mistrust and fear. Generative AI is widely seen as a force that needs to be reckoned with, as it poses significant ethical, financial and legal challenges, with many in the creative community nervous about job security or the future value of their work. Even though strides were made and protections earned by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA during the dual strikes of 2023, the uncertainty remains.

It wouldn’t be CES, however, without blue-skying. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang delivered his annual keynote Monday, highlighting how the trillion-dollar tech giant is enabling robotic and autonomous vehicle design and leaps in quantum computing. It is also deeply involved in visual effects, animation and virtual production. Huang, prowling the stage with a smile in his signature black leather jacket, told the 14,000 attendees in the Mandalay Bay arena that Nvidia’s Blackwell, “the engine of AI, has arrived for PC gamers, developers and creatives.” He called it “the most significant computer graphics innovation since we introduced programmable shading 25 years ago.”

Sphere, the breakthrough new venue just off the Las Vegas Strip, is powered by Nvidia technology and played host to another major keynote that had attendees envisioning a better tomorrow: a splashy presentation by Delta. It highlighted the airline’s 100 years of aviation history and also featured a surprise appearance by seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady.

Along with those vivid glimpses of AI’s potential, though, came plenty of real-world concerns. Many attendees seemed to be holding both versions in their heads at the same time. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director and lead negotiator of SAG-AFTRA, spoke for many when he called AI during a CES panel “a tool and also an existential threat.”

Many top film directors, among them James Cameron Jon Favreau, view AI as “a tool that, as long as they were the ones to control it, was a creative tool to enhance their filmmaking,” said Russell Hollander, executive director of the DGA during a panel at the Labor Innovation and Technology Summit, which was held in Las Vegas during CES. Recalling the environment before the unions won concessions from studios and streamers, he continued, “They weren’t looking at it the same way that the studios were looking at it. They weren’t looking at it to cut jobs or to save money. They were looking at it as a creative tool.”

Moiya McTier, an astrophysicist and folklorist who is also a senior advisor to the Human Artistry Campaign, agreed about the potential of AI. As both a creative writer and scientist, she uses machine learning in her research. “What I call executive AI will be really good for the creative community – things like, making sure your tour is very efficient and where your marketing strategy should be,” she said on a panel titled “AI and the Crisis of Creative Rights: Deep Fakes, Ethics and the Law.” On the other hand, she continued, “The generative side of AI is, I think, absolutely a net negative for the creative community. The cons here outweigh a lot of the pros, where it will be harder to find good music, it will be harder to kind of break through the noise of all of the AI-generated stuff.”

Crabtree-Ireland spoke at the LIT Summit and also on the “Crisis” panel featuring McTier and four other AI experts. He shared his own experience of having been the subject of a deepfake video during the high-stakes period when his union’s contract was being negotiated with the AMPTP. “We have to do something here,” he said. “We are currently in month six of our strike against all major video game companies in this country because they refuse to agree with the same basic protections for digital ratification” that others have.

“If we don’t make sure the industry is moving down the proper pathway with respect to implementation of AI tools in general and generative AI in particular, that could be a very real and devastating threat to the role of creative talent and creative people in our world,” Crabtree-Ireland added. “I don’t think any of us would want to see a culture that is based on algorithmic outputs.”

Chad Hummel, a principal in the LA office of law firm McKool Smith, believes a legal battle will need to be fought, in addition to gains secured by unions or, potentially, new government legislation. “Look for some courageous musical artist, some courageous actor, some courageous human to take action in a court to get injunctive relief, and to have a speed bump” preventing the technology from racing ahead without guardrails.

Lisa Oratz, senior counsel at Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based law firm whose clients have included Google, Microsoft, Intel, Meta, and Amazon, interjected, “Can I just respond to that? This is a challenging issue. There are positives and negatives. I do think it’s a net positive and I think on the creative side for creators it’s a tool that helps you do things you couldn’t do before. … Now, yes, there are issues of employment, there are a lot of issues that go around that, but I do think it’s a net positive and we just need to figure out how to strike that balance so we don’t throw out the good with the bad. And I do think we’ll get there. I’m an optimist. I think it’s challenging but I think we’ll get there.”

Richard Kerris, a former Lucasfilm and Apple exec who now heads the media and entertainment division of Nvidia, said some of the anxiety around AI is reminiscent of past uneasiness about other technologies. “It wasn’t that long ago that digital video was not allowed on the floor of NAB because it wasn’t considered to be broadcast-quality,” he said, referring to late-1980s editions of the major conference for the broadcast TV industry. “A few years later, it was flipped. There’s this fear that people get when they’re looking at some new technology. They say, ‘Well, that’s bad because it’s going to take our jobs.’ It’s actually going to disrupt jobs, yes, but it’s going to open a lot more opportunity.”

Samira Panah Bakhtiar, GM of Global Media & Entertainment, Games, and Sports for Amazon Web Services, agreed with Kerris, saying innovations like “sound and color and film or 8mm film, these things would have been really scary at the time.” Ultimately, she said, “there’s always going to be a place for industry expertise.”