Christopher Nolan is the newly elected chair of the Director’s Guild of America, and the Oppenheimer helmer has been using his platform to address the AI debate, and call for more protections and “a voice in how this tool is used moving forward.”
Christopher Nolan is busy putting the finishing touches to The Odyssey, his star-studded, big-budget adaptation of the Homer poem.
But Nolan is also now head of the DGA, and has been addressing multiple issues facing the industry, including healthcare, pension plans, profit participation, and tax incentives.
He even discussed the AI issue in terms of streaming ads, Disney’s OpenAI deal, plus how the technology might affect director’s livelihoods in the near future.
Christopher Nolan say director’s need to “have a voice” in AI plans
Christopher Nolan is chair of the AI committee that was created in 2023, and tasked with understanding how the technology will evolve, where the Guild fits with, and ensuring that directors get proper remuneration for their work.
“We have excellent protections, but that’s not enough,” Nolan told journalists, as reported by Deadline. “You have to have a voice in how this tool is used moving forward. Also, we like to try and have a voice in, what’s the legal framework? Because we generally aren’t the copyright holders of our work, but our income, our residuals, depends on the appropriate monetization of those copyrights.
“So we’re constantly in dialogue with the companies about, are you maximizing the value of the work that we’ve created? Because we do benefit from that enormously.”
The issue with streaming ads
With streamers transforming into ad-supported platforms, movies and shows are now being interrupted, and where those breaks occur – and what gets advertised – can be decided by AI. Which is another issue of concern, as Nolan explains:
“In creative terms, there’s a huge number of struggles around, ‘OK, what happens to our work that goes on television?’ That’s been a historic struggle, but the Guild has had a major voice here, and in a strange way, with this brand new technology, we’re sort of looping back into those kinds of scenarios.”
“I, as a filmmaker, in my entire career, I’ve never had to deal with that reality till now, because you were always going to the home through VHS, through DVD, through Blu-ray, through streaming uninterrupted, not ad-supported. So something like the ad-supported model coming in, it might seem like a simple business decision, but it has creative rights impacts, huge ones.”
Nolan addresses Disney’s deal with OpenAI
Nolan also spoke about the deal that Disney recently struck with OpenAI, through which the company’s characters would integrate with AI tools for the next three years.
“The deal Disney did with OpenAI – I see that as a positive in terms of establishing the principle of licensing,” says Nolan, but he then caveats those words by adding: “Until we see how that’s going to be paid through to the union members of all three unions, which, at the moment, we don’t know what that’s going to be.
“When these companies will have the support of the deals is when they’ve shown how creatives are going to benefit from those kind of licensing opportunities.”
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