Thank you. This is the missing component of modern day capitalism. If there is no ethical considerations of the impacts of industry on humans, it can be barbaric. It can also be done better, though not perfectly:
Henry Ford treated his workers with a mixture of unprecedented generosity and strict, paternalistic control. In 1914, he famously introduced the $5-a-day wage and an 8-hour workday, which doubled pay, reduced turnover, and helped create an industrial middle class, but this was paired with surveillance of workers’ private lives and a, at times, violent opposition to unionization
László Gaál was an early adopter for AI for short film and commercial content. He just won the Runway ML BigAd contest.
He also has a fun entry to Runway’s Big Pitch contest (could find a direct video link, but you can watch it on his LinkedIn post).
We’re having him as guest on next Wednesday’s (5/20 @ 1pm EDT) CML Zoom call. Roberto Schaefer has been working with him for some time and will host the conversation.
I don’t want to overshare the Zoom link here in a public forum, but if you email/DM me, anyone interested is more than welcome to join.
Some interesting numbers that give a preview on how AI affects our business.
Posted by Paul Melcher on the Q1 Getty Images results. Paul has been a long-term business consultant and innovator in the commercial still photography business.
Headline revenue was roughly flat at $226.6M. Beneath that, a clear bifurcation:
→ Editorial up 11%, driven by Olympics in Milan Cortina coverage
→ Creative down 4.5%
→ Agency revenue down 14% (now <15% of total)
→ Premium Access subscription: 100% retention in Q1
→ iStock free trial program discontinued after renewal rates dropped below 10%
three different revenue pressures on the Creative side of the business:
Agencies in long-term decline as clients bring production in-house with AI tools.
MicroStock hit by Google’s AI search results collapsing the affiliate-SEO funnel.
Generative AI offerings bundled into adjacent products, converting away the volume-end buyer.
What is harder to miss is the inverse signal: editorial is the half of the visual content market that AI cannot replicate.
The signal for the industry: the high end of visual content, editorial, exclusive, provenanced, is holding. The commodity end is being eaten.
A single person made an 80 minute feature in seedance 2 in a month - I’ve only watched the first few mins… looks cool, still has “ai issues”.
It seems to me that - issues and all - AI filmmaking is becoming it’s own “thing”.
Edit: watched the whole thing… it’s… somewhat entertaining, visually striking - but not a coherent “movie” yet. More like a very long meandering demo. Still impressive.
For those interested, good conversation with László Gaál during our weekly CML Zoom call. He just won the RunwayML Big Pitch contest, and has been quite successful in AI film making and turning this into commercial assignments as well. More hands-on detail, from the perspective of a storyteller, not an AI show-off.
A word of caution. A bust of bubble is an event that is always predicted. Much like earthquake. And sometimes it happens. Don’t put all your eggs in the AI basket is all I’m saying. It makes no sense.
AI Infrastructure Spend at $4 Trillion per YEAR - Big Tech and Wall Street are Stupid
Yes, this is well understood. There will be many tears along the way. And people with iMacs who have no underpants left to wear.
There are crazy people and there are less crazy people. Anthropic will be turning an operating profit in the next quarter based on numbers. They haven’t been as flashy as OpenAI or xAI. They have executed better than MSFT and Google. No guarantees. Plus there are many models from outside of the US, which are not part of the $4T.
We should assume that AI will survive in some capacity. What that will look like is anyone’s guess. It could be an extension or evolution of today’s tools, or just a faint shadow of it until it re-emerges at some future point.
The next test in the next 6 months will be, as we’re starting to pay real rates and not subsidized rates for using AI, the market has to proof that there is still a place for AI at those prices. If there is, it gets to stay.
And there are serious concerns about the data center build outs, from environment to economy. There is good reason for the blow-back.
And I have no problem at all if Wall Street guys lose their shirts over AI. They’ve always treated everyone as just numbers and widgets. They have not earned our empathy if they bet on the wrong horse.
