Speaker 1: Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and
Speaker 1: analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Thursday, October sixteenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co
Speaker 1: editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in
Speaker 1: La He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around
Speaker 1: the world covering the business of entertainment. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: we'll talk with Variety's Gene Modis about his eye opening
Speaker 1: article on AI being used in the front lines of
Speaker 1: creative development, reading and evaluating scripts. Is the script reader
Speaker 1: rung of the production latter about to go away? Gene
Speaker 1: unpacks his reporting and we'll conclude our week on the
Speaker 1: French Riviera with the roundtable with my three Variety colleagues
Speaker 1: who joined me in covering the mipcom content market, Elskis Lassi,
Speaker 1: John Hopewell, and Leo Baraclough. Before we get to that,
Speaker 1: here are a few headlines just in this morning that
Speaker 1: you need to know. Warner Brothers Discovery has struck a
Speaker 1: streaming distribution pact with Korea's cj E and M. There's
Speaker 1: HBO Max will distribute CJE and m's t ving streaming
Speaker 1: platform in seventeen markets across Asia Pacific, including Southeast Asia, Taiwan,
Speaker 1: and Hong Kong. CBS News Head of Standards Claudia Milne
Speaker 1: has exited amid the shakeup in the division and the
Speaker 1: arrival of Barry Weiss as editor in chief. My colleague
Speaker 1: Brian Steinberg has the scoop rip to actor Penelope Milford.
Speaker 1: She was so good in nineteen seventy eight's Coming Home,
Speaker 1: for which she earned an Oscar nomination. She was seventy seven.
Speaker 1: You can find all of these stories and so much
Speaker 1: more on Variety dot com. Right now. Now we turn
Speaker 1: to conversations with Friday journalists about news and trends in
Speaker 1: show business. Gene, Variety Senior media reporter, has the details
Speaker 1: about a momentous test that was recently staged by the
Speaker 1: Editors Guild. Who does the job better AI software or
Speaker 1: professional script readers? Gene, Mattis, thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2: Happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Gene, you have been on a mission to look really
Speaker 1: deeply at AI and look at concrete ways in which
Speaker 1: this revolutionary technology is changing the business, and you've delivered
Speaker 1: us a story this week. It's in the Variety's print
Speaker 1: edition as well as online, a great, deeply reported story
Speaker 1: about a very specific use case for AI that definitely
Speaker 1: involves human activity. Tell us the basic concept of what
Speaker 1: you wrote about, and tell us what was the spark
Speaker 1: for you to pursue this story.
Speaker 2: And we've been covering AI certainly intensely since the strikes,
Speaker 2: and the writers and the actors both had their own
Speaker 2: unique concerns about what could happen if AI came into
Speaker 2: their domains and started writing script and started acting in movies,
Speaker 2: right and this I was more interested in this case
Speaker 2: in what is already happening, not what threats are sitting
Speaker 2: on the horizon and could be in the future happening,
Speaker 2: but what is actually happening now. This one was a
Speaker 2: really concrete one of what can AI do that we
Speaker 2: know it can do now today? It can absolutely summarize
Speaker 2: written material. At everybody who's googled something or looked at
Speaker 2: chat GPT or asked for a quick summary of something
Speaker 2: knows that it can do that. And so there are
Speaker 2: people in Hollywood, obviously who are paid to read scripts
Speaker 2: and summarize them, who would be at the front lines
Speaker 2: of people who are impacted by AI if in fact,
Speaker 2: that becomes like a standard thing in the industry. So
Speaker 2: that's what I wanted to look at. What are those
Speaker 2: folks worried about and what.
Speaker 3: Are they doing about it?
Speaker 1: What is the specific program or platform that is the
Speaker 1: focal point of your story.
Speaker 2: So there are a few of them, and they're all
Speaker 2: built sort of on top of the standard lms that
Speaker 2: everybody knows about, you know, chet GPT or LAMA or
Speaker 2: CLAUDE that's available. And what these things are is they're
Speaker 2: very small teams of people three four people who can
Speaker 2: program and an interface that's geared specifically for screenplays based on
Speaker 2: those language models. So there's a couple. There's script Sense
Speaker 2: is a very popular one. There's one called green Light,
Speaker 2: there's a Veil, and we talk about Screenplay IQ in
Speaker 2: the story. But there's a number of these that are
Speaker 2: out there that are using AI technology specifically to give
Speaker 2: feedback and notes on screenplays, to summarize screenplays. And that's
Speaker 2: see exactly what a story analyst in Hollywood does is
Speaker 2: write a coverage report based on a screenplay and tell
Speaker 2: the bosses, here's what's in this and here's whether you
Speaker 2: should make it or not. And that's what these programs
Speaker 2: are reporting to do.
Speaker 1: The proponents of AI say that the AI tools are
Speaker 1: going to do the drudge work, the labor intensive stuff
Speaker 1: that nobody really likes doing but is essential to the process.
Speaker 1: But here we go right to something that there's no
Speaker 1: question reading a script is a subjective thing. They're looking
Speaker 1: for voice and nuance and does a person have a
Speaker 1: flair for dialogue.
Speaker 2: What's interesting is the people who make these platforms, I mean,
Speaker 2: part of their purpose in making them is they feel
Speaker 2: like that subjectivity is a problem, right, And wouldn't it
Speaker 2: be great if there were computers that could objectively analyze
Speaker 2: whether a script is good or not and then sort
Speaker 2: of the best ones flow to the top. And so
Speaker 2: that was the motivation for creating this particular program. And
Speaker 2: so the people who are supportive of AI sort of
Speaker 2: see it as like leveling the playing field, right, opening
Speaker 2: up opportunities and allowing you to focus on things that
Speaker 2: you might not have otherwise seen. But the script readers
Speaker 2: themselves wanted to know, like, what are we up against
Speaker 2: and can this thing actually do my job? And so
Speaker 2: they investigated that and they did a study of it
Speaker 2: to find out what is the difference between AI generated
Speaker 2: script coverage and human generated script coverage.
Speaker 1: And what did they find, Gene.
Speaker 2: It's parallel to what people have found about playing around
Speaker 2: with AI and many others. When it's tasked with just
Speaker 2: distilling the content, it does a pretty good job of that.
Speaker 2: It can write a log line just as well as
Speaker 2: a human being can write a log line, and maybe better. Right,
Speaker 2: it doesn't have maybe the idiosyncratic problems that a human
Speaker 2: would would introduce. It can summarize, so that's a little
Speaker 2: bit longer, but it can do a summary that's pretty good,
Speaker 2: but maybe not as good as a professional script reader
Speaker 2: doing it, but passable. It's when it gets to notes
Speaker 2: that the real problem begins and evaluating critically, is this
Speaker 2: a good script does have something new to say? Is
Speaker 2: it just regurgitating what we've already seen a thousand times.
Speaker 2: That's where it just cannot do the job. That's what
Speaker 2: they found. Now, obviously this is coming from the point
Speaker 2: of view of people who do this professionally, but they
Speaker 2: put it up against human script readers versus all these
Speaker 2: AI programs that we talked about and matched them across
Speaker 2: all these different dimensions and found that the notes are
Speaker 2: where the humans still beat the AI hands down.
Speaker 1: Is there any union or any organization out there that
Speaker 1: is really up in arms about this? On behalf of
Speaker 1: the platoons of script preaders that work in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Yes, so full time story analysts, I should say that
Speaker 2: is the term. Full time story analysts are represented by
Speaker 2: the Editors Guild, which is obviously part of myozzi. Freelance
Speaker 2: story analysts are not. This study was actually done under
Speaker 2: the aegis of the Editor's Guild. And what's interesting about
Speaker 2: that is the Editors Guild is actually pretty pro technology.
Speaker 2: When you think about editors, you know, these are people
Speaker 2: who are pretty comfortable with, you know, learning the next
Speaker 2: software program. The Writer's Guild is obviously very concerned about
Speaker 2: any AI touching scripts at any point and certainly need
Speaker 2: notification if AI is being used to evaluate their scripts.
Speaker 2: And so as of now, this is not really a
Speaker 2: thing that's being used in any kind of formal way,
Speaker 2: certainly at the studios, but independent producers agencies other places,
Speaker 2: they are definitely using this kind of thing. The AI
Speaker 2: companies will tell you that story analysts are using this
Speaker 2: right now on the sly whether their employer is okay
Speaker 2: with it or not.
Speaker 1: What was your sense of talking to industry executives about
Speaker 1: the use of this technology and whether they were concerned
Speaker 1: about a loss of specificity and a loss of finding
Speaker 1: the absolute gem of a writer. In a specscript, if you.
Speaker 2: Talk to the top top people who do story analysis
Speaker 2: at the studios, they will tell you that the executives
Speaker 2: really do rely on them and value their input and
Speaker 2: see it as a vital, essential part of their process
Speaker 2: and would be pretty unhappy to have that person replaced
Speaker 2: by a computer. The concern people have is, you know,
Speaker 2: to what degree does this become kind of normalized over time,
Speaker 2: and when a younger generation comes up that has spent
Speaker 2: their whole school years using AI to help with their
Speaker 2: studying and help write their college essays or whatever, are
Speaker 2: those folks going to be much more comfortable with this
Speaker 2: kind of thing and the way that they do things
Speaker 2: now will just be completely outmoded. That's that's really the fear.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we've probably raised enough nail biting concerns
Speaker 1: for our industry for one segment. Gene, thanks for your
Speaker 1: labor as always, thanks for having me. Now we'll wrap
Speaker 1: up our coverage of the MIPCOM Content Marketing con with
Speaker 1: a lively conversation with my three Variety colleagues, Elsa Caslasi
Speaker 1: International Editor who is based in Paris, John Hopewell, intrepid
Speaker 1: correspondent and editor of our digital dailies franchise, who is
Speaker 1: based in Madrid, and Leo Barakloff International Features Director who
Speaker 1: is based in London. We are all running on fumes
Speaker 1: after a busy market. But here's our best effort to
Speaker 1: make some sense of the week that was. And we
Speaker 1: all extend our gratitude to mipcom chief Lucy Smith and
Speaker 1: her staff for treating Team Variety so well. Elsa Gaslasi,
Speaker 1: John Hopewell and Leo Baraclough. We made it through mip Indeed, yes,
Speaker 1: as we all call it a wrap. Here today on
Speaker 1: Thursday October sixteenth, thought it would be fun to go
Speaker 1: through some questions about things that stood out to us.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you guys coming to play here. Okay, let me
Speaker 1: start pretty broad. Most surprising moment of.
Speaker 4: The week that I noticed how packed the session with
Speaker 4: YouTube was. YouTube celebrates his twenty year anniversary this year,
Speaker 4: and they made their first official presence at Midcom. And
Speaker 4: you had Pedro Pina, who's the bus of EMEA for
Speaker 4: YouTube we had a conversation with a BBC studio's executive
Speaker 4: and the session was packed like no other that I've noticed.
Speaker 1: At Midcomb, we had CEO Neil Mohan on the cover
Speaker 1: in March of this year and really put their twenty
Speaker 1: year milestone into perspective.
Speaker 5: What about you, Leo.
Speaker 3: I did a non stage interview with Robbie Brenner, who's
Speaker 3: the head of Mattel Studios, and she was emphasizing the
Speaker 3: fact that she wanted the projects to surprise, and certainly
Speaker 3: one of her projects surprised me because it's a live
Speaker 3: action movie based on Monster High and the director is
Speaker 3: going to be Gerard Johnston, who's best known for the
Speaker 3: horror hit Megan.
Speaker 5: Mine was probably how happy people seemed, whilst at the
Speaker 5: same time Guy Bison for Exauplet at Ampere Analysis was
Speaker 5: saying we're still at seventy five percent of PEAKTV. In
Speaker 5: other words, you have one hundred percent production sector spawned
Speaker 5: by PEAKTV chasing seventy five percent of the market. If
Speaker 5: it's sunny, people tend to forget that.
Speaker 1: For me, the biggest surprise overall was how significant the
Speaker 1: microdrama business is. I attended a really great presentation from
Speaker 1: an analyst named Claire Thompson, and the size and scope
Speaker 1: of this business is impressive, growing in the US. Most
Speaker 1: surprising single fact you heard. We all moderated panels. We
Speaker 1: sat through panels. There's a lot of facts and figures
Speaker 1: talked about. I will start with this one. Back to
Speaker 1: the microdrama panel. This blew my mind in tracing the
Speaker 1: arc of microdramas starting in China in twenty eighteen. The
Speaker 1: first big audience for them in that timeframe was older people,
Speaker 1: people ages forty to sixty and completely counterintuitive.
Speaker 5: It will be raphalike you've said microdramas. I talked to
Speaker 5: the people who were making the first microdrama in the
Speaker 5: Arab world. The revenue this year not in twenty thirty,
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty five for reach eleven billion dollars, which
Speaker 5: has already double the size of the revenues for fast channels.
Speaker 5: That is huge.
Speaker 1: What about you, Wilsa.
Speaker 4: So for me, the biggest surprise was hearing Marco Bassetti
Speaker 4: from Banije, which is a company best known for unscripted
Speaker 4: format you know, like Master Chef. They're actually looking to
Speaker 4: invest more in movies because Marcos seekings that people are
Speaker 4: going to get tired of series repeating themselves with the
Speaker 4: same plots, and so it thinks that there's going to
Speaker 4: be a growing happetite for movies and he wants to
Speaker 4: invest more.
Speaker 1: Leo, what about you.
Speaker 3: The fact that surprised me was in Junior, which is
Speaker 3: for children's shows, and it's that sixty five percent of
Speaker 3: eight to eleven year olds have their own social media accountant.
Speaker 3: Amongst greet of eight year olds, they watch five and
Speaker 3: a half hours day or more.
Speaker 1: All eric most calm moment something funny, you overheard or observed,
Speaker 1: something that would only happen in Can.
Speaker 4: So for me, the most Can moment was having a
Speaker 4: great launch on the beach with Cheryl l Azar, who
Speaker 4: hosted the Digital up Fronts this year. And then I
Speaker 4: saw Carolyn Benjo, my great friend, a great producer from Friends,
Speaker 4: who actually was on the co production panel that she
Speaker 4: hosted Cynthia, and it was so you know, interesting to
Speaker 4: have a French producer and an American digital creator Shira.
Speaker 4: You know, it was like the best of both worlds
Speaker 4: coming together on the beach in Cahn.
Speaker 1: Yes, she was so impressive. John, you are definitely a
Speaker 1: veteran of the cosset this time around. What was your
Speaker 1: most can moment.
Speaker 5: It's seeing people who know they're on to a great deal.
Speaker 5: A company called Scene based in the Lebanon Rotana Media,
Speaker 5: which is one of the biggest studios in the Arab world,
Speaker 5: presenting that they were going to create the first late
Speaker 5: ever of microdramas in the Arab world, and they knew,
Speaker 5: you could see it from their faces of the press conference.
Speaker 5: They knew that they were going to make a proverbial package.
Speaker 3: I'm going to stretch your definition a little bit because
Speaker 3: last night I went on a set visit to a
Speaker 3: town down the coast called Casis, beautiful town, and that
Speaker 3: there's a German production being shot there, a series called
Speaker 3: West End Girl, and I met the cast and crew,
Speaker 3: and one of them, Lucas Gogorowitz, is very well known
Speaker 3: in Germany. He's in the German version of My Agent.
Speaker 3: For example, he happens to know someone I lived with
Speaker 3: while I was at the university, and I haven't seen
Speaker 3: for decades. So that one of those kind of moments
Speaker 3: where paths cross that you didn't expect.
Speaker 1: That segues nicely into mine, which was I could not
Speaker 1: believe I ran into Paul Siegel, who was in his
Speaker 1: mid eighties now, and he was the owner of a
Speaker 1: little company called All American, which gave the world Baywatch.
Speaker 1: He and his brother sold All American thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: but he's still in the business. He owns an animation
Speaker 1: company in Mumbai. Because I think media entrepreneurs, I think
Speaker 1: they have trouble stopping. Last one biggest questions you have
Speaker 1: leaving this market, what concepts, what stories are you going
Speaker 1: to chase?
Speaker 4: You know, I'm just wondering about the future of the
Speaker 4: creator economy and if we're going to see another platform
Speaker 4: as powerful as YouTube emerging in the future, because right
Speaker 4: now YouTube is in a very dominant position. And also
Speaker 4: if that creator economy is really there to stay or
Speaker 4: if it's a phase.
Speaker 1: I will say that I have been extremely skeptical of
Speaker 1: when this world of creators and social media video, when
Speaker 1: would it amount to a real business for professional, high
Speaker 1: end content producers. And I do think that moment is coming.
Speaker 1: There's a whole world of AI and marketing and branding
Speaker 1: infrastructure around the creator economy. John, what's the big idea,
Speaker 1: the big concept that you're going to be thinking about.
Speaker 5: I think business models which really monetize the collaboration which
Speaker 5: you now see from the old economy and seen new
Speaker 5: economy for example, and YouTube.
Speaker 1: What about you, Leo.
Speaker 3: My question is where is the next big, huge unscripted
Speaker 3: format can come from? Because a lot of the legacy
Speaker 3: formats like Got Talent, Idol, the family Feud, the price
Speaker 3: is right, they are decades old. And so where's the
Speaker 3: next one coming from? I mean, okay, You've got Traitors,
Speaker 3: which is fantastic, and Fremantle have something called Pandora's Box
Speaker 3: which they hope will be us Helper, which is owned
Speaker 3: by John Demole. They've got something called The Floor which
Speaker 3: is now in thirty territories, and ZEP so that is succeeding.
Speaker 3: But these things are around.
Speaker 1: John de mall is a Paul Siegel type. I think
Speaker 1: he's easily on his fourth or fifth company of the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years or so. Well, listen, all three
Speaker 1: of you have worked really hard. Thank you for killing it.
Speaker 1: I hope you worked in some good meals along the way.
Speaker 4: We did have some great meals. Yes always.
Speaker 1: Again, as we close out today's episode, here's a few
Speaker 1: things we're watching. Its Power of Women's season again for
Speaker 1: Variety We're getting ready to celebrate this year's West Coast
Speaker 1: honorees at an event October thirtieth and Beverly Hills. Our
Speaker 1: annual issue will be published October twenty ninth. As ever,
Speaker 1: we will have five gorgeous covers, one for each of
Speaker 1: our honorees Jamie Lee Curtis, Kate Hudson, Nicole Scherzinger, Sidney Sweeney,
Speaker 1: and Wanda Sykes. Stay tuned before we go. Congrats to
Speaker 1: Yoshinaga Sayuri, the legendary Japanese actress, will receive Lifetime Achievement
Speaker 1: honors from the Tokyo International Film Festival. That festival runs
Speaker 1: October twenty seventh through November fifth. Thanks for listening. This
Speaker 1: episode was written and reported by me Cynthia Littleton, with
Speaker 1: contribution from Gene Maddis, Elsi Caslasi, John Hopewell, and Leo Baraclough.
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