They are about both.

Short term streaming residuals are important.

Long term AI protections are a must.

I almost feel like the AI proposal was a form of 'dead cat' strategy; while everyone is understandably angry about AI and fixated on that, no-one is talking about the actual issue that kicked all this off (the share of residual royalty payments)

I took a look and it's honestly a lot further along than I was expecting in terms of capability. In all honesty, for low level conent this is already surpassing the minimum necessary and I can already imagine greedy, low effort art thieves going all in on these and jaming out completely shows. And I expect people will watch them, or at least tolerate some of them.

You are making the same mistake I see a lot of people make when it comes to AI, which is looking at the status quo as a snapshot rather than a change over time.

The last widely reported on AI generated 'show' was the Seinfeld one from...checks notes...a few months ago.

The leap between what that was a few months back and this here is quite something.

So your "right now" may be true for today, but quite possibly by as early as the end of this year there will very much be something to worry about.

(Though really, there still won't be much to worry about, as the future will almost certainly be AI plus human efforts, not either or.)

My thinking is that from a studio's perspective it may be like a proof of concept that AI can get close enough to do what they care about make a passable imitation that gets buts in seats that will generate ad revenue or ticket sales. Fundamentally they aren't really concerned about producing quality material as long as it sells, so if the AI can get them to something kind of good its likely worth their attention. I think that's what writers and actors are concerned about and that is why even an unfunny south park episode is a threat. Fable can say their work is research all day long but their goal can easily change the second a studio shows up with a check in hand.

Also it is not clear here is how much human editing and tweaking was done after the AI was finished with it's part. I suspect people kind of helped the AI get to a final product, but without them disclosing their procedure it's hard to know.

We think the timing is correct — we are right in the middle of the biggest strike in 60 years, by releasing the research (but not the ability for anyone to create episodes of protected IP) we hope [for] the Guilds in Hollywood to negotiate strong, strong, strong protections that producers cannot use AI tools without the express permission of artists. Frankly the IP holders also need to figure out how to negotiate with AI chatbot companies who are profiting from their work.

And what's the problem here? They aren't trying to profit off this tech here, they're building a stronger case for the strike. Did the writers of this article read their source material?

Indeed, they already did an episode about ChatGPT. It wasn't bad, and in traditional South Park style it roasted both "sides" of the debate.

Embedded in this article

Reminds me of the AI Seinfeld awhile back that ran 24/7 before it got shutdown.

Cheers for the link mate

Thanks for the link!

It's not bad. For some reason Stan Kyle and Tolkien have pretty accurate voices, then Cartman and Garrison aren't even close.

South Park would've made the mett porker pig go much further lol

If that's really from the show I'm amazed. That seems super self aware,

Only when it's intentionally censored and trained to react in a particular way. When it's not, you remember it was trained on random internet content.

They played around with making an AI generated episode of black mirror but it wasn't good enough to be compelling.