AI Adoption in Entertainment Shows Some Gains: Goldman Sachs
Generative AI’s impact in the workplace has been a hot-button issue in most industries, especially in the creative fields.
But AI adoption is beginning to materialize across sectors — at some of the strongest levels in the Motion Picture & Sound Recording subsector, per recent Goldman Sachs analysis of U.S. Census Bureau survey of U.S. businesses shared with VIP+. With the U.S. Census Bureau’s recent release of an AI-focused supplement from its “Business Trends Outlook Survey,” Goldman Sachs analysts assessed the status of the adoption wave across industry sectors and within specific subsectors.
On average, under 5% of U.S. companies across all industries reported adopting AI in the production of goods and services as of October 2023. Compared with adoption rates in other industries, the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation sector ranked in the bottom half of industries, with 4.1% of businesses in the sector citing AI use as of October 2023.
Notably, the Census Bureau did not only ask about adoption of generative AI. Examples of artificial intelligence that a business might use were given as including machine learning, natural language processing, speech recognition, large language models and more.
Early adoption in the sector was followed by a nearly complete halt, with no incremental adoption as of March 2024, a slowdown that might in part reflect work stoppages during last year’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, which had AI at the top of their grievance lists.
However, zooming in on industry subsectors suggests more significant adoption rates in film and TV production. As of last October, 14.3% of businesses in the Motion Picture and Sound Recording subsector reported using AI to produce goods and services, followed by 1.6% of incremental gain in March 2024.
Furthermore, businesses in the Motion Picture and Sound Recording subsector were among the most likely to report plans to integrate AI in the next six months, increases outpaced only by Computing and Information subsectors.
While we aren’t likely to see AI-generated background actors or fully AI-written film scripts anytime soon, generative AI tools being used for non-creative and administrative functions of the entertainment business is a growing possibility.
But gen AI is materializing in some areas of film and TV production, though not without debate. Major and indie film studios alike have already experimented with AI-generated art, albeit to mostly negative reception among consumers.
Generative AI tools are also likely to come into use for visual effects. OpenAI’s yet unreleased Sora text-to-video software has raised alarms for some VFX artists, though there are plenty of kinks to work out. But given how AI has transformed productivity in other tech-driven industries, there are VFX artists who see the benefits to AI when it comes to saving time and streamlining workflows.
