Tyler Perry has halted an $800m (£630m) expansion of his Atlanta studio complex following the release of OpenAI’s video generator Sora and warned that “many jobs” in the film industry will be lost to artificial intelligence.
The American film and television mogul said he was in the process of adding 12 sound stages to his studio but has put those plans on hold indefinitely after seeing demonstrations of Sora and its “shocking” abilities.
Perry, whose successes include the Madea film series, said Sora’s achievements meant he would no longer have to travel to locations or build a set: “I can sit in an office and do this with a computer, which is shocking to me.”
Demos released by OpenAI, the developer of the groundbreaking chatbot ChatGPT, show photorealistic scenes in response to requests such as a request for a photo of people walking through the “beautiful, snowy city of Tokyo” where “gorgeous sakura petals are flying in the wind along with the snowflakes.”
Perry said the advances introduced by Sora would affect a range of jobs across the film industry, including those of actors, editors, sound specialists and transport crew.
He said: “I’m very, very concerned that in the near future there will be a lot of jobs lost. I’m really, really scared.”
Perry said an immediate example was the construction workers and contractors who would no longer work on his studio’s planned expansion because “there’s no need for it.” He added that he used artificial intelligence in two recent films, in which the technology was used to age his face and help him avoid hours in the makeup chair.
Concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence on the workplace have been a feature of recent Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes, with the peace agreements that ended those disputes showing both sides’ reservations about the use of the technology.
However, Perry told the Hollywood Reporter that a “whole-of-industry” approach was still needed to save jobs.
“You can’t have one union fighting every contract every two or three years. I think it has to be everybody, everyone involved in how we protect the future of our industry, because it’s changing so rapidly, right before our eyes,” he said.
