“Actors Are F**ked…” – Joe Rogan Smells Trouble Brewing for Hollywood as Retired Navy SEAL Recalls Strikes & Controversy

Joe Rogan is very worried about artificial intelligence. In a potentially epoch-making event, that could change the way the world works, akin to the invention of the steam engine, the automobile, or computers, OpenAI released the world’s first generative AI model, ChatGPT in November 2022. This, of course, has been followed by equally startling advancements in the form of AI-generated images and finally, videos.

Given these advancements and the diverse range of things it could do, Rogan is worried about the future of the world and America in particular. And he thinks that generative AI has sounded the death knell of many Hollywood jobs, as he told former Navy Seal and actor Jack Carr in episode #2156 of the JRE.

Joe Rogan amazed at AI advancements

Joe Rogan was watching an AI-generated video of a robot’s life in a Cyberpunk world. The details and quality of the video blew Rogan’s mind, who couldn’t help but exclaim, “This is crazy [that] this is fake!” The UFC commentator felt that the clip was so good that “You would think ‘oh, someone got a camera and they’re filming all these stories of a robot’s life in Cyberpunk settings.” 

Rogan was extremely impressed with the quality and seeming realness of the video and informed his guest, who didn’t seem very well versed with the innovations in AI, that the video had been created using a simple text prompt on OpenAI’s video generation software, Sora.

“I mean these videos that they can make now are incredible. And again this is a AI, OpenAI text-to-video model, Sora,” Rogan said. It is to be noted that Sora is yet to be released and still is in its developmental stages and testing stages. For now, according to the OpenAI website, Sora has only been made available to ‘red teamers’ for risk and error assessments. Apart from that, several creative professionals, like visual artists, designers, and filmmakers also have access, and the company looks forward to leveraging their feedback.

This reminded the 56-year-old of watching Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher speak about the dangers of AI in a recent interview and wondered if this is why the actor was scared of AI in Hollywood. “And is that the one that Ashton Kutcher was talking about? I don’t know if Ashton Kutcher was talking about in the news yesterday something about AI and something about Hollywood with doing this stuff,” Carr said. This brought Rogan to the topic of writers, and actors with the podcast host declaring ominously that “Actors are f**ed.”

Rogan fears the worst for actors and writers due to AI

In fact, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), as well as the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike last year, with one of their main demands being over the use of AI in creating scripts as well as using the AI-generated likeness of actors for films and movies.

However, even though the strikes did manage to secure some concessions on the topic from producers and studios, Rogan felt that the Hollywood actors and writers were screwed in the long run. Rogan felt that they might become ‘obsolete’ with the advent of generative AI capable of generating scripts and videos.

“They’re f**ed, everyone’s f*ed, actors are f*ed, everyone’s f**ed. They don’t have much to negotiate with unfortunately. There’s an inevitability with this kind of technology. It’s like would you write books with a feather?” he added.

While generative AI such as OpenAI is certainly capable of generating text and videos, some experts feel that it still lacks in the creativity department. Most text generated by AI is more stultified, repetitive, and less creative than human-generated text. However, as OpenAI reveals on their website, there is still room for improvement and we never know what the outcome would be if these issues are perfected. What are your thoughts on the topic?