OpenAI Has a Hollywood Problem. They Just Hired a Guy to Fix It.

A “detriment” to human creativity, said Vince Gilligan, creator of “Breaking Bad” and “Pluribus” about AI. “Horrifying,” said James Cameron about the possibility of AI actors. “I’d rather die,” said Guillermo del Toro. “Incredibly destructive,” said Cate Blanchett.

It’s not hard to see why OpenAI recognizes it has a bit of an image problem among some people in Hollywood. It appears that the company is now trying to change that.

OpenAI just poached Charles Porch from Meta, where he oversaw celebrity partnerships for over a decade, as Vanity Fair reported earlier. Porch is generally recognized for helping make Instagram the cultural juggernaut it is today by helping celebrities who might have been confused by or disinterested in newfangled social media join and use the platform.

Porch has deep connections in the entertainment industry — celebrities like Harry Styles attended his lavish wedding this summer in France.

Porch wrote on his personal Instagram about his job change:

“From helping Beyoncé figure out how to launch an album exclusively on social media to onboarding Pope Francis to Instagram (he held my hands and asked me to pray for him) to watching creators become the next generation of entrepreneurs, the impact on culture that me and the team have been able to have is something that I take great pride in.”

It’s not clear exactly what Porch’s new gig will entail. He told Vanity Fair that his first step will be to go on a “listening tour” to hear the hopes and fears about AI from creatives and celebrities. I’ve asked OpenAI for comment.

For Hollywood actors, filmmakers, and studio executives, those fears are pretty big. Why wouldn’t Brad Pitt be alarmed to see a passably real AI-generated version of himself in a fist-fight against Tom Cruise?

The idea that AI could replace actors, screenwriters, and other creatives is alarming, especially as Hollywood as an industry is hurting. Box office sales haven’t bounced back from the pandemic, streaming is complicated, fewer and fewer projects are being made, and efforts to cut costs by filming overseas have devastated Los Angeles’ middle-class of film industry workers.

On top of that, AI is, as far as I can tell, widely considered a theft machine that gobbled up tons of images and videos from movies and TV for training data, largely without permission or compensation.

You can see a filmmaker or actor’s point of view here: They stole my face and my work to build this tool, and now they want to use it to make soulless slop that will undercut the value of my work?

Why OpenAI’s hire has a tough road ahead

Not great! I imagine Porch has his work cut out for him.

OpenAI and other AI companies have started making deals with Hollywood. Disney made a $1 billion deal with OpenAI around the time Sora 2 launched, licensing Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader, and also becoming a customer and investor in OpenAI. Lionsgate and AMC made deals allowing their catalogs to be used for training Runway. (Business Insider, through our parent company, has a somewhat similar deal with OpenAI.)

But those deals with studios, while they might stave off copyright lawsuits and create some cash flow, aren’t winning over the hearts and minds of the celebrities and creatives — the kinds of people who make headlines when they call AI “horrifying.”

Perhaps OpenAI is realizing that celebrities still hold the kind of cultural capital that can’t be built in the Bay Area. And while OpenAI has been pretty successful in pushing its agenda in Washington, thanks to an AI-friendly administration, it still has an uphill battle to win over the general public, which remains fairly skeptical of AI.

And for that, you need to get the celebs on board. There’s a beautiful irony now that these big AI companies are paying big bucks to hire human writers, and VCs are now obsessed with the concept of “taste.”

It turns out that kinds of “soft skills” that had long been undervalued in Silicon Valley are more relevant than ever now that AI can do a lot of the technical work. And someone like Charles Porch, who has the connections and ability to charm a roomful of Hollywood types and other cultural elites, is more valuable than ever. That’s the kind of job AI can’t take.