#8 - AI Video Gen Brings Us Closer to Personalized Entertainment. You Don't Want It.

I got into Football this NFL season. It’s destroying my writing career.

Most NFL games air on Sundays. I write my articles on Sundays.

You see the problem…

So here I am, laid out on the couch in front of my TV. My laptop scorching my stomach while I try (and fail) to write something clever about Meta’s new video-generation model, Movie Gen, that’s stolen headlines this week.

This shouldn’t be difficult.

After all, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about a future where AI video-generation tools are widespread.

That future excites me. Making high-quality videos is expensive, and we are the poorer for it.

Every Hollywood film today is a sequel, reboot or adaptation. The audiences these movies attract guarantee a return on their steep production costs. Betting on an edgy idea or unproven director is too risky.

Most content creators, like myself, could communicate our ideas more effectively in video. Instead, we write articles or record podcasts because they’re less burdensome mediums.

With video, the juice has to be worth the squeeze. And in most cases, it isn’t.

AI video generation changes that.

Imagine how much richer the cinematic landscape would be if YouTubers could produce Hollywood-quality films, without the meddling of a Hollywood studio diluting their product.

Imagine how much more effective our children’s educations would be if they could generate video explainers on the fly for every one of their knowledge gaps, instead of reading the same dry textbook as the rest of the school district.

Imagine how much further important ideas would spread if writers could turn their articles into videos, starring their digital twins.

Dream even bigger…

Imagine a future where all entertainment is fully-personalized to you. A future where everyone gets to watch their own perfect movies and play their own perfect video games.

I want to write about all of these things today. But I can’t rip my eyes away from the Commanders vs. Ravens game raging on my TV, where a rookie quarterback faces off against a two-time MVP. It’s the storyline of the week.

And it’s dopamine overload.

Both of my Fantasy Football group chats are lighting up. Twitter is flooded with memes and snarky remarks. I’m practically itching to hear my favorite sports podcasters discuss the game tomorrow.

And then it hits me.

Does anyone ACTUALLY want fully-personalized entertainment?

Sure, a lot of video entertainment today is designed to appeal to the average viewer, not us as individuals. But at least we get to experience it together.

We’re social creatures. I’ve long believed that all of our human behaviors, all of the quirks we’ve built into our world, are rooted in a base desire to connect with one another.

The same is true of entertainment.

Every seemingly single-player experience is still a multi-player experience.

I played a lot of single-player video games in high school. I spent just as much time watching others play those games on YouTube or Twitch as I spent playing the games myself.

I’m a sports fan. But I spend way more time listening to podcasters chat about sports than I spend actually watching NBA or NFL games.

Honestly, I didn’t love Game of Thrones. But I watched every single episode the moment it aired on HBO because I loved debriefing and theorizing with friends afterward.

Even directly after watching a movie (a time when movie reviews will do me absolutely no good), I still open YouTube to hear what my favorite reviewers thought about it.

We want to be entertained, but more than anything we want to connect. Personalized entertainment upgrades the former while downgrading the latter.

I don’t think that’s a trade we’re willing to make.

Do you?