Katzenberg Says Entertainment Industry Must Embrace AI or Risk Irrelevance

DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg published a 2,394-word essay on X on Sept. 23, saying the entertainment industry has no choice but to embrace AI. Katzenberg, credited with helping oversee the Disney Renaissance in the late 1980s and early 1990s, wrote that "to resist technology is to risk irrelevance" and that "Hollywood needs to accept that AI is not going away."

In the essay, he cited John Philip Sousa's resistance to recorded music, noting that Sousa's campaign contributed to the Copyright Act of 1909 but did not stop the technology. He also pointed to orchestra pit musicians in the silent-film era whose jobs were eliminated by sound motion pictures. "They were not fools, and they were not Luddites. They were right. Those pit jobs did not come back," he wrote.

Katzenberg said he asked a chatbot to explain the difference between reasoning and creating, and that the answer changed how he thinks about the industry. He predicted that after AI-powered filmmaking takes hold and budgets consequently collapse, "more films will get made, not fewer," and studios will "take more risks." Twice in the post, he admitted he does not have all the answers, adding at one point, "take Quibi, for one!" Quibi, his short-form streaming venture, launched and shut down in 2020.