DreamWorks co-founder Katzenberg likens AI to CGI revolution
Hollywood giant Jeffrey Katzenberg at Axios' AI+ Summit Wednesday likened the arrival of artificial intelligence to the advent of computer graphics in the 1990s, which revolutionized animation.
The big picture: Whether Hollywood overcomes its unease to eventually embrace AI could be a bellwether for the technology's impact on other industries and on jobs.
The dispute over AI was central to the 2023 writers strike, which ended with an agreement that included landmark rules on AI in projects.
Zoom out: Katzenberg, a co-founder of DreamWorks and one-time Disney executive whose work includes films like "Shrek," reflected on the "huge" resistance to making "Toy Story" with the then-novel CGI technology.
The people most afraid were the ones who would be disrupted, he said.
"Everything that you are hearing today are the issues that we had to deal with," he said.
Katzenberg continued, "Yes, there was disruption, but animation's never, ever been bigger than it is today."
The bottom line: "AI isn't going to replace people, it's going to replace people that don't use AI," he said.
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