Significant Number of Consumers Believe AI Could Outshine Human Creators

22% of U.S. consumers believe AI could create more interesting content than humans, according to Deloitte's survey.

Hollywood has been working through concerns about the potential impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the entertainment industry. A recent survey by Deloitte has shed light on consumers’ perceptions of this emerging technology’s role and power in entertainment content. The 18th annual Digital Media Trends survey, which polled 3,517 U.S. consumers aged 14 and older in October 2023, revealed that while the majority (70%) still prefer content written by humans, a significant 22% believe that generative AI could create more interesting TV shows and movies than their human counterparts.

This sentiment is particularly prevalent among younger generations, with 30% of millennials and 25% of Gen Z consumers expressing faith in AI’s creative potential. Furthermore, 42% of respondents overall believe that both generative AI and humans can produce entertaining content. These findings come amid growing concerns in Hollywood about the potential disruption and job losses that AI technology may bring to the industry.

Proponents of AI argue that it can democratize content creation and revolutionize visual effects, making them more cost-effective. The survey also found that Gen Zs and millennials are at the forefront of experimenting with AI tools, with 18% having used generative AI to create images and 25% having used it to create text. Older generations, however, are lagging behind in adopting these technologies.

The impact of generative AI on the entertainment industry has shown and been widely discussed. Entrepreneur, actor, and director Tyler Perry announced the halt of an $800 million expansion to his Atlanta studio complex shortly after the announcement of Sora, OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool. A recent HarrisX poll also revealed that many U.S. adults struggled to differentiate between AI-generated and human-created videos, with many incorrectly guessing the origin of five out of eight videos shown to them.

The use of AI by studios has been a contentious issue for the two striking Hollywood unions in the past year. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) secured guardrails around the use of generative AI in the creative process, including the right to challenge the use of writers’ existing work to train AI software programs. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) agreement with studios includes some, but not all, of the union’s demands on AI.

At the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES 2024, Hanno Basse, CTO of visual-effects company Digital Domain, expressed concern about the advent of AI-generated human replicas that are indistinguishable from real humans. He emphasized the need for responsible use of this technology, stating, “It's up to all of us to figure out how to use it responsibly.” Similarly, further and more comprehensive regulations are also being called for.

While younger generations embrace its potential, the industry as a whole must grapple with the ethical and practical implications of AI’s growing influence on content creation.