Is This the Holy Grail of AI-Generated Content?

Ever since the WGA in Hollywood started going on strike I've been thinking about what angle to take writing a blog post about AI and its future affect on the entertainment industry. Maybe the best way to explore how AI might end up changing the film industry is through fiction.

I've made posts about the SCP Foundation before and there will be more posts about the SCP coming soon. I can promise you that. For those new to the concept the SCP Foundation is a collaborative creative writing project. The SCP Foundation is portrayed as a secret organization that operates globally and specializes in containing and studying anomalous entities, objects, and locations that defy natural laws or pose a threat to humanity.

In this case the anomalous object contained by the SCP Foundation is a "bespoke streaming service" that generates movies based on data the website's user enters into text boxes.

AI generated content has been popular news for at least the last few months. You might think that this trending topic helped inspire the creation of SCP-5702 but the SCP-5702 entry was created on the SCP Foundation wikidot site back on November 24, 2020 by user LordStonefish.

Video is basically a collection of consecutive still images that, when played back at a fast enough speed, creates the impression of motion for the images. Some more artistic people might visualize this principle in their mind as a flipbook. I am more STEM-oriented so I picture it in my mind as a zoetrope. Get artificial intelligence, a sufficient amount of AI-generated still images, voice cloning, and deep fake blended together and SCP-5702 could be a real possibility. `

Currently AI chatbots like ChatGPT can write a short story based on a prompt like "Gegerate a story about a mad scientist that tries to take over the world.". Most likely it won't be a good story but it will qualify as a short story. Better quality can be generated if ChatGPT is given an outline for the desired story. But then there is little AI story variable for a surprise or an unexpected plot twist leading to the story's ending.

The writers currently on strike in the film industry are concerned that artificial intelligence will replace them as writers. SCP-5702 would be an existential threat to the film industry as a whole. In the way SCP-5702 is described the streaming service can create far better stories than current AI can and incorporates it into a motion picture studio quality video. SCP-5702 is "anomalous" so it is unclear how the video is generated. As an SCP fan I can come up with a few hypotheses. Maybe SCP-5702 video is generated by artificial intelligence but it is done through a Jupiter Brain that the "Red Deal Pictures Distribution" Group of Interest somehow located and has connected to it. Maybe SCP-5702 just plucks the video from the omniverse of possible timelines. Maybe this is all just Rick Sanchez scamming the SCP Foundation out of the $8,000 set aside to fund testing SCP-5702.

If SCP-5702 really did exist maybe Hollywood would hide it like some believe that the Vatican is hiding the chronovisor. I can imagine how SCP-5702 could be used to discover new talent. Just put the names of actors being considered for roles into SCP-5702 and generate a movie in the genre similar to the planned project. SCP-5702 could be used to simulate their performance before being signed. Maybe if certain names had been put into SCP-5702 as producers and directors at the beginning of their careers Hollywood would have avoided some box office failures.

There are some good writers on strike in 2023. I am sure there were some good textile workers back in 1813. Just because a textile worker is great at their job doesn't mean or justify not using machinery when the machine can increase productivity. SCP-5702 is an interesting idea. The $14 per video price seems like a great deal. I'd use it if I could and not feel bad that an anomalous machine rather than humans made the movie. I'd prefer a TV episode version of SCP-5702 though.

I think artificial intelligence will end up generating most entertainment content in the future. Just like how some believe that it would be better to replace most of the traditional financial institutions with blockchain and cryptocyrrency I think most of the entertainment industry being replaced by artificial intelligence would be a good thing. SCP-5702 is a model of what that could be like.

Captain Picard entering a Dixon Hill holodeck story is the kind of future I want to support and work toward. I can see how current 21st century AI could make that possible.