Leadership CONNECT: 18-DEC-2024 (Y24W52)

Google Veo2 and OpenAI Sora mean many movie/editing professions will be gone in a few years.

In 1900, more than 100,000 people in NYC worked in the horse industry; they bred horses, managed stables, drove carriages, and cleaned up after them. Blacksmiths, saddle makers, and carriage builders thrived as vital parts of this ecosystem. However, with the rise of the automobile in the 1910s and 1920s, demand for horses plummeted. Many of these professions were lost over the next 30 years as cars replaced horses, transforming entire industries, reshaping urban infrastructure, and leading to a dramatic shift in employment patterns.

The latest updates from OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo underscore how quickly AI video technology advances. Such tools can now generate hyper-realistic visuals with unprecedented speed, quality, and affordability. I had the chance to experiment with Sora myself, and the results are nothing short of stunning (see “Orange Horse in NYC” above). However, while these innovations are groundbreaking, they pose a significant threat to many traditional video professions.

In the next 5 years, as this technology matures, here are some roles that will face significant disruption:

• Video Editors: Basic editing tasks will be automated, reducing the need for manual labor.
• Animators: AI can now generate lifelike animations in seconds, eliminating weeks of work.
• Content Creators: The need for human-made short-form content (ads, explainers, social media videos) will shrink.
• Voiceover Artists: AI-generated voices are already realistic and customizable, reducing reliance on human voices.
• Storyboard Artists: AI tools can conceptualize and visualize entire storyboards with a few prompts.

This isn’t a distant future—it’s happening now. While AI opens up new creative opportunities, it also raises challenging questions about how we adapt to these changes.

The video industry is an especially telling case for the impact of AI on jobs. The video outcome can be easily distributed, and there is minimal regulation. This industry is known to adopt new technologies to cater to the whims of talented creators.

There is, of course, a bigger question here for all professions — How do we adapt and evolve in a world where machines excel at most professional tasks?