If you had written a screenplay then fed it into an AI that generated the visuals and audio, would that empower more people to do the same? Imagine the plethora of content that would be generated around the world.
Yes, of course it will empower more people. Any new tool that opens a market to hobbyists will do as much. Anything that reduces barriers to entry will result in more people entering that market.
The movie industry has had barriers to entry, mostly financial. New CGI blockbusters cost $200m+. Imagine being able to do something of the same visual and aural quality for $1m. Or $100k. Or $10k.
And as those barriers drop further, more and more will of course enter the market. And the market will develop, and ideas of what makes a good film will change.
Heck, if all you had to do was plug in a screenplay and a genre into the AI, I'd be writing screenplays now and trying it out.
But those with money behind them will nearly always be able to produce better looking and sounding stuff. AI may even save Hollywood. The idea of bankable actors will die out. Initially the well known actors will be scanned, the AI using their likeness, and that will help promote some films ahead of those with generic AI faces. Especially as the acting by the AI gradually improves, such that real voice-acting is still initially preferred. But as AI improves, actors will no longer be a requirement other than for stage/theatre. Everything else will be AI. People will get used to not seeing the same actor in film after film, although whoever makes the films may create and copyright certain models/faces that they then reuse if they do well with the audience.
So lots of things will change. Jobs will disappear. New ones will be created. Hollywood will still leverage the tech to stay ahead of the competition in terms of quality, until such time as money offers no advantage over Joe Bloggs' ability to produce films.
But more and more films will be produced the easier it gets. And wading through the rubbish will become harder. Even now, on streaming platforms, it takes a while to find out which films are of better quality. Now triple, quadruple the number of titles. You'll still be drawn to certain studios almost as a stamp of quality. At least for a while. Until the independents catch up in quality. But new ways of identifying the better quality will arise.
That's been the way things have happened in any industry where barriers gradually drop.
But we're a while away from such happening yet. AI is clearly improving at a rate of knots, but barriers still exist, and will do for the foreseeable, as the power and tech required to run such AI will always be at the top end of things.
