Never mind AI, the streaming services are already destroying themselves

There is much concern about the frightening advance of AI. In Los Angeles, members of the Writers Guild of America which represents 11,000 writers have entered their fourth week of strikes. They are demanding, among other things, higher pay, and crucially, that the studios guarantee they won’t slice into writers royalty payments by crediting AI tools such as ChatGPT on scripts. 

There is indeed a real threat of screenwriters’ jobs becoming redundant as AI advances. Yet the streaming services who employ writers are far more likely to self-sabotage long before AI becomes sophisticated enough to produce television and film scripts worthy of being made. 

Look at a lot of the ‘content’ that the studios have pumped out in recent years. 

Amazon’s Rings of Power, which is estimated to have cost the studio at least $1 billion (£810 million) and had only a 37 per cent domestic completion rate (customers who watched the entire series).