In Swifties, Netflix is trusted.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during Tuesday’s earnings conference call that the company isn’t worried about competing for more eyeballs in the era of AI-generated content, drawing an analogy to the music and popularity of Taylor Swift.
“If music is a leading indicator of all of this, AI-generated music has been around for a long time, and it’s abundant, and it’s only a small portion of total listening,” Sarandos said. “And established artists like Taylor Swift continue to be more popular than ever. So even in a world filled with AI music, AI seems to be primarily a tool for musicians to take their sound in new directions.”
Netflix co-CEOs Sarandos and Greg Peters were asked how the streaming platform plans to leverage artificial intelligence and whether they are concerned about increased competition for engagement with the arrival of AI video production tools such as OpenAI’s Sora 2.
Recent apps like Meta AI’s Sora or Vibes have made it easy to create AI-generated content with a single prompt.
Business Insider’s Katie Notopoulos, who has tested AI video tools, described her experience with Sora 2 as a never-ending “general flow.”
For Sarandos, this is what differentiates AI content from the work of rare artists like Swift.
The co-CEO said that while AI could have a short-term impact on viewership of user-generated content, it cannot replace Netflix’s desired library.
“For what we do: it takes a great artist to do something great,” Sarandos said during the earnings conference call. “Writing and directing shows well is a rare commodity, and it is achieved by very few people.”
Instead, Sarandos said AI would be a tool for the company’s creative partners to tell stories “better, faster and in new ways.”
Peters also said on the call that Netflix’s approach to AI has remained unchanged for more than a decade and a half. Part of Netflix’s future investments in AI, he said, could include advertising and “content production.”
In a letter to shareholders Tuesday, Netflix said some of its filmmakers have already used generative AI to “realize their visions,” including in “Happy Gilmore 2,” starring Adam Sandler, to age characters.
“We’re not worried about AI replacing creativity,” Sarandos said, “but we’re very excited about AI creation tools helping creativity.”
