If you've ever wondered what it actually looks like when the work goes away (somebody filmed it. Sixth Tone released a documentary this week following China's short-drama industry as the platforms shifted their money from live-action shoots to AI-generated ones. One half is a real industry. Crews, sets, filming bases, a director with more than forty scenes to shoot in a day. An actress in it says AI short dramas were everywhere) and then, in her words, "work suddenly fell off a cliff." The other half is a company in Wuxi that, in its own words, "quickly pivoted to AI production." The film describes what they run now as a full AI production studio, using AI agents at every stage of production (stages that, quoting the film directly, "once required professional screenwriters, directors, and editors." Here's the line I can't stop thinking about, and it's theirs, not mine: "Greater efficiency is only the most basic advantage." That isn't a tech company bragging about speed. That's them saying speed isn't even the main point. And one of the people working in that room says he spent eight or nine years in traditional film and animation before this. So the question stops being "is AI going to take the job." It becomes something more specific and less comfortable: when the work that once needed your whole department gets done by agents, what exactly, in what you do, doesn't compress? I don't have a clean answer yet. I think it's the better question. In your department) what's the thing you do that genuinely doesn't compress? Not the hopeful answer. The real one., -
The piece
SIXTH TONE DOCUMENTARY WATCH THIS ONE ALL THE WAY THEN IT CUTS TO THE OTHER BUILDING
GREATER EFFICIENCY IS ONLY THE MOST BASIC ADVANTAGE THE AUDIENCE ALREADY STOPPED NOTICING THOSE ARE THE ONES WHO GOT IN THE ROOM
WHAT EXACTLY DOESN'T COMPRESS? WHAT DOESN'T COMPRESS? SEND IT TO SOMEONE WHO'S GONE QUIET
Source: Sixth Tone, "Inside China's Shift From Short-Drama Sets to AI Factories.".