The Wrap 10 Predictions for Media, Entertainment and Tech in 2024 Read full article Peter Csathy 20 December 2023 at 4:00 pm · 11-min read
‘Tis the season for my annual 10 predictions for the worlds of media, entertainment and tech for the coming year.Here are what I expect to be 2024’s headline stories.
Prediction #1: AI is the headline story, and nothing else comes close Talk of AI will continue to dominate, as it should given the immense transformation we will see AI take in our industry from this point forward.AI is poised to disrupt lives across the creative community – which means disruption to the meaning of art itself.
Expect a sobering breakthrough on the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI).There’s a reason why OpenAI’s cautious board members ousted CEO Sam Altman, only to have him returned by the company’s “no holds barred” VC investors.
And once AGI gets real, it will upend our entire media and creative ecosystem, not to mention all of our systems period.
Until then, artists and creators will begin to experiment with generative AI in earnest.So will the major studios and streamers, and you can bet that SAG-AFTRA and the WGA will be watching.Few traditional motion picture and television industry jobs will be lost at the artificial hands of AI in 2024, but that will begin to change in the years ahead, even as new AI-born jobs arise.
Look to media-focused companies like Flawless to begin enabling AI-dubbing, which will mitigate the need for subtitling to reach global audiences.At the same time, AI-enabled pre-visualization will become a “thing” in its early stages.
And 2024 will be the first full year we will see how consumers respond to AI-infused creative works both their dollars and emotions.Will those works “connect” at a human level?
Big Tech companies, meanwhile, will do their best to skirt any limitations on their AI development and AI’s power.Alphabet (the company formerly known as Google) will promote its new “nice” sounding SynthID system and claim to be a “white knight” for enabling automatic detection of copyrighted works used to train AI systems.But, at the same time, Google and others will look to invest in companies like Character.AI which enables users to create chatbots that impersonate humans like musician Billie Eilish, with or without either license or consent (the company indicates it is up to users to do what is needed).
Story continues AI-powered music will increasingly flood our streaming world.Skeptical of Google and other Big Tech players, expect the major labels to turn to new “forensic AI” companies to both track AI fingerprints and enable new ways to pay the artists whose works and identities have been stolen.
Prediction #2: AI regulation is coming to the U.S.(it’s already in the EU) Congress and regulators will do their best to control AI’s otherwise unbridled rise by developing guardrails to promote transparency, identify content provenance, and protect against the theft of names, images, voices and likenesses for profit, some of which will be necessary and sensible – but several that may not be.
Once again, as in the case of social media, they will follow the EU, which just recently passed sweeping groundbreaking measures to regulate AI.The push for a national “right of publicity” will gain steam.
Ultimately, dollars will decide how this all plays out, since no copyright and content exclusivity (the ability to monetize) come from AI-only generated works, and no one knows how consumers will react to creative works that are increasingly “synthetic.” Copyright remains the most powerful guardrail bar none.
Dollars matter and the profit motive is strong, young Skywalker.
As I wrote in my last column , expect the courts to flesh out this fundamental copyright guardrail with critical AI-focused rulings on the issue of what constitutes copyright infringement both on the “input” training and “output” sides of the equation.We can already read the tea leaves of where it’s all heading based on early decisions.Judges have ruled that even full-scale copying of massive numbers of copyrighted works can be acceptable transformative “fair uses.”
Prediction #3: TikTok encroaches on Netflix’s turf, as streamers continue content belt-tightening Margot Robbie in “Barbie” (Warner Bros.) Our collective obsession with TikTok will only deepen, even as Congress continues to threaten to pull the plug.The courts will strike down Montana-like “shut-it-all-down” laws, and younger voters will rebel against any serious “teeth.” The social media platform’s increasing dominance of our attention, not to mention its increasing focus on longer form content, will also begin to eat into our “Netflix and chill” time, and the streaming giant will begin to feel the pain.
Meanwhile, streaming content budgets will continue to fall back to Earth due to basic business realities of costs outpacing revenues.Expect all major streamers including Netflix to do more with less content.Gone are the days of continuous billion-dollar content budget increases.
Call it the “Barbie Effect,” as all major streamers smartly focus more on evergreen, ever-reprogrammable franchise content.Disney is the gold standard here with its Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars and Disney Princesses brands.But tech-first streamers like Netflix will also begin to quietly experiment with AI to further cut costs and generate new content with better economics.
So-called FAST channels (free ad supported television) will continue their surprising assault on paid subscriptions, especially internationally — critical territories for U.S.
SVOD expansion.
Remember, 40% of the world’s 8 billion population is still offline, most of whom are economically challenged mobile-first eyeballs to capture.
Prediction #4: Social media’s influence and Musk’s madness accelerate Speaking of TikTok’s and social media’s increasing hold on our attention, Elon Musk will continue to drive X/Twitter’s downward spiral as advertisers continue their mass exodus and billions are shed from the company’s valuation.Musk will turn to his far out, far-right friends to fill his emotional and financial void and excoriate detractors in the name of “free speech.” Unfortunately, we won’t be able to escape how his basest instincts play out, especially in this election year.
That will be no laughing matter, as the world begins to realize how much power one brilliant, yet increasingly off-kilter man, holds over all of us on this planet, including in the world of global defense communications where Musk can decide when and where to turn on and off his Starlink satellite system.
Prediction #5: A “deep-fake” election year where cable news relevance continues to wane AI-supercharged social media will fuel divisive flames at a level never before seen.Watch for “deep fakes” and serious danger to democracy around every corner.Being a Presidential election year, 2024 means that politicians will preen, posture and play to their respective bases as pundits pontificate.That means there will be a never-ending stream of it all by a less-disciplined media that is pressed for profits as we watch more TikTok and less cable for our news.
The resulting mud that is slung will be increasingly dirty, and generative AI will be the shiny new toy used by the most ruthless and unhinged conspiracy fueled campaigns and influencers.
Prediction #6: The M&A fuse will be lit and spark more consolidation Jeff Zucker (Getty Images) Not all change in 2024 will be divisive, of course.
After a relative pause in 2023, and due to continuing tech-driven headwinds, Hollywood pairing via M&A will reignite in 2024.Disney has openly teased its dealmaking appetite during this past year.Now real deals dipped in cheese will follow as the magic kingdom tries to reclaim its spot as the happiest place on Wall Street amongst other major traditional media companies.Disney will buy out Comcast’s remaining 33% stake in Hulu for more than $8 billion and pay that bill by spinning out its linear channels.Meanwhile, former CNN topper Jeff Zucker will resurface to buy and reimagine the U.K.’s right-leaning The Telegraph.
For their part, Big Tech behemoths will continue to eye increasingly vulnerable traditional media players a la Amazon buying MGM.
Paramount, Warner Bros.Discovery and Comcast’s NBCUniversal are all in their lines of sight.Those storied studios give these Silicon Valley-infused streamers the franchise content they covet to capture and retain our attention to drive sales of their underlying core products.Content becomes marketing first and foremost.
Prediction #7: Zuckerberg trades his metaverse dreams for AI Mark Zuckerberg (Getty Images) Mark Zuckerberg, Big Tech’s “Dr.Evil” before Musk, continues his rehabilitation tour both for himself and his company Meta by continuing to jettison the billions he previously spent on his metaverse dreams and redeploy them on AI (notice a theme here?).
And for the most part, we all let him off the hook because our focus is now on other more pressing matters.
In fact, talk of the metaverse — which dominated Big Tech discussions just one year ago pre-ChatGPT — now finds itself constrained to the smallest conference rooms across the entertainment industry.As a result, Apple’s VR headset, launched earlier this year, will continue to serve as a niche product asterisk in 2024.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have power.It simply means that a mass-market appetite doesn’t yet exist and won’t for quite some time.
Prediction #8: Live “immersive” experiences will grow in numbers and importance Although immersive tech in the form of VR headsets finds itself largely relegated to the back burner for now, that doesn’t mean that immersive tech and experiences are not powerful.In fact, tech-enhanced live, experiential entertainment in all of its forms — concerts, festivals, sporting events — will continue to both expand and attract.In fact, such experiences will be increasingly important to escape the surrounding “noise” and connect with our families and friends in the real world to create shared, joyful, lasting experiences and memories.
Just look at what Taylor Swift and the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas did this year.Taylor’s tour generated more money than the economies of several countries (it’s the first to gross over $1 billion ), while the Sphere re-imagined what out-of-home entertainment can look, sound and feel like.Bob Iger and Disney’s plans to dramatically increase investment in their theme parks are a smart and savvy sign of the times.
Prediction #9: Gaming will outpace other entertainment, as music keeps growing Through it all, the nearly $300 billion gaming industry — which is expected to more than double to $650 billion by 2030 — will continue to obsess us as it massively outpaces the rest of the media and entertainment industry.The appellate courts will uphold Google’s game-changing loss in court to Epic Games regarding the excessive toll it takes for purchases in its Play Store (the equivalent to Apple’s App Store).
Google will be forced to significantly cut its “take,” and game developers will cheer the significant extra money in their pockets.
Ultimately, Apple will follow suit (one way or another).
For its part, the music industry will continue to lift our spirits no matter what the world throws at us.That means TikTok first and foremost, of course (see above).It also means that Spotify will both continue its impressive growth and its search for elusive profitability.Hence its recent mega-layoffs .Music catalog sales will soar despite the current Hipgnosis meltdown (a cautionary tale) since we listen to music in good times and in bad, as reflected in Goldman Sachs’s most recent music industry report which, once again, revised its global music industry numbers upward to about $50 billion by 2030.
Prediction #10: Web3 will be down but not completely out Web3 in all of its forms – including so-called digital tokens or digital tickets – will continue to hold promise for creating direct lines of communication, shared value and monetization between creators and their audiences.These are worthy goals for a younger generation intent on creating new opportunities and new rules of the game.
But that promise will be lost for now amidst the rest of the industry noise, not to mention continuing skepticism by the older crowd of blockchain-based tech in general.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s conviction for wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering is still too fresh and Web3 is guilty by association, even if digital tokens have no real relation to him and crypto-currency in the first place.
Daunting forces await in 2024, but so do transformational and exciting new opportunities.It’s the unanticipated and unexpected twists and turns that frequently change our lives more than anything else.Case in point: the launch of ChatGPT just over one year ago.No one anticipated generative AI’s commercial launch and cataclysmic global impact prior to Nov.
30, 2022 — and look at us now.
The trick is to be stoic about it all and take fearless action to control what you can as we usher in the new year — all with a sense of hope, possibility and a willingness to pass a meaningful part of the torch to fresh young talent with constructive and creative new ideas and ideals.
Cheers to 2024 — and to a bold, inspired, kind, generous, joyful and positive new year!
For those of you interested in learning more, visit Peter’s firm Creative Media at creativemedia.biz and follow him on Twitter @pcsathy.
The post 10 Predictions for Media, Entertainment and Tech in 2024 appeared first on TheWrap .
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