Title: I work in video &#x2F; filmmaking &#x2F; ads in London. Most of the work in this space is short form video for YouTube &#x2F; Instagram and TV.<p>Now I am seeing the video generating AI (imagen video from Google on the front page) and I’m 100% sure a good percentage of the work will vanish. There’s loads of work that ad agencies will just hire an AI prompt guy to generate for ads. Big companies will still make ads, of course, but smaller gigs that keep the whole industry afloat? What about even 10 million $ shots with CG characters that will now become commonplace?<p>I’ve retrained before. I started off as an editor, then did VR video, now moved into CG. I’m pretty good at my job - I’ve worked on stuff for Dell and Apple, including stuff you’ve probably seen.<p>It’s funny to think I might have to retrain yet again. I didn’t expect image generation AI to be the next big leap. I was already moving into more storytelling content (ie documentaries) because that’s more defensible against AI. But I expected 3-4 years before video generation would just come out.<p>Now it seems like it’s happening so quickly I’m not sure they won’t have good stuff out in 6 months to a year.<p>So - HN - what do I do now? And what about the other fellas in my industry who will be out of a job? In my estimate, we are talking about tens of thousands.<p>To counter the obvious: I have learnt web dev at one point I thought I’d make the jump, even started learning React but I found the work to be mind numbing. I just love making images. But I feel like Pierre Auguste Renoir’s who was a plate painter in France and did a good living out of it - until the process was industrialised and he struggled (maybe for the rest of his life? I don’t quite recall).<p>To counter the second suggestion: AI prompt design is not image making as far as it would interest me. I also don’t think there will be a huge learning curve. Becoming a filmmaker on my standard requires about 10 years experience or an excellent school (of which there are maybe 10-20 in the world). I would imagine AÍ promoting will be done by the lowest paid interns available.<p>What do I do HN?
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