AI slop is coming for Hollywood. Some of it is already better.

AI slop is coming for Hollywood. Some of it is already better. SNL's Michael Che and Jane Wickline as Dario Amodei during Weekend Update : Will Heath/NBC via Getty Images NBC's Saturday Night Live aired a sketch mocking Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last weekend. A day earlier, an AI-generated music video took a similar swipe, featuring a fake Amodei singing "Hit the Breaks Except for Me."I laughed harder at the AI version.Created with an AI tool called Slopcannon, it needed little more than an audio file, a few images, and an idea. Compare that with the SNL sketch, which took a team of highly paid professional writers, actors, and a major TV studio.This is a glimpse of where entertainment may be headed. And as I've argued before, it's both an opportunity and a threat for Hollywood.AI can help studios make films and TV shows faster and cheaper. But it also lets individuals produce videos more easily, creating more competition for viewers' attention. (I've watched the Slopcannon video more than the SNL skit, for instance).Yes, plenty of AI-generated videos are still terrible. Then again, so is a surprising amount of human-made content on social media — and even on Netflix. The quality gap is closing.Something sensible US film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP via Getty Images DreamWorks cofounder Jeffrey Katzenberg thinks Hollywood should embrace AI, the way it embraced other new technology in the past."As the barriers and the costs come down, more films will get made, not fewer. Studios will get to take more risks. There will be more seats at the table, and very soon entirely new forms of storytelling," he wrote on X. "Every time storytelling has met a genuine technological shift, from synchronized sound to color to computer animation, it has redefined the boundaries of the medium and grown larger in the process." After all the extreme AI warnings of the past few weeks, it's a relief to read something sensible.Sign up for the AI Insider newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com Read next Alistair Barr is the driving force behind Business Insider's AI Insider franchise, including the AI Insider newsletter. Sign up here. Before that, he was Business Insider's Global Tech Editor and the Big Tech team leader at Bloomberg, following a reporting career at The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch. Alistair covers all things Big Tech, along with startups and venture capital. He writes analysis and columns about topics including AI, cloud computing, data centers, semiconductors, online search, e-commerce, EVs, robotics, and autonomous vehicles. AI Artificial Intelligence Generative AI More automation Employment Jobs Netflix Hollywood Media AI Insider