CES 2025 kicked off appropriately with a high-powered panel on AI’s impact in entertainment. Under the expert moderation of our friend, and former president of the Hollywood Professional Association, Seth Hallen, three of the industry’s most senior leaders spoke candidly about what the technology means to the industry: Samira Panah Bakhtiar (GM of Media and Entertainment, Games, and Sports at Amazon Web Services), Academy Award-winner Ed Ulbrich (Chief Content Officer and President of Production at Metaphysic), and Richard Kerris (GM of Media and Entertainment at Nvidia).

The tone was as spot-on as we’ve seen, with serious but sober enthusiasm for the technology, hope for how it would open up creative avenues previously not available, and the need for empowering vs. replacing.

Everyone agreed that AI is only worth doing if it’s opening up new products and creative opportunities for the benefit of the three pillars of the industry: creatives, VFX artists and, of course, the audience.

Empowering Creatives

Hallen opened by summing up where the entertainment community is today in its conversation about AI: It’s all about “shifting our focus back to the human.”

Sure, panelists agreed, giving everyone “near-Hollywood” visual media creation tools was the right thing to do. But as the ocean of visually-stunning-acid-trip GenAI videos we’ve all been deluged with makes abundantly clear, GenAI alone can’t touch the craft of narrative.

It is highly refreshing to see that after many months of hyperbolic circus, the focus was thankfully back to where it started: “a good story, a good story and a good story,” to quote Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was speaking nearby. Quite an opening for an annual gathering chronically over-optimistic about technology.

Empowering VFX Artists

Pivotal in this argument was Metaphysic’s Ulbrich, fresh from his team’s masterful Generative AI work on Robert Zemeckis’ “Here,” assuring the audience that he is “all in” with the tech. From sound and color in film to CGI, every advancement brought initial fear but eventually created more opportunities for storytellers, he reported.

And while AI drastically reduces production time and cost, vastly accelerating visual effects, Ulbrich noted, “this is not push of a button. It still takes artists and talent to make this technology sing. The tools are powerful, but the fundamentals of storytelling remain vital.”

Having led the VFX team for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (which won him an Oscar), Ulbrich also knows intimately how difficult and threatening AI can be for VFX and post-production artists: “traditional VFX takes years, tens of millions of dollars, and hundreds of people, and suddenly we could do it in real time.”

But as his experience co-founding Digital Domain has taught him, this new wave of creative disruption, just like CGI in its day, will create even more jobs than it automates out of existence. He reminded everyone that CGI was controversial when it started, and DD had been picketed many times back in the day.

In the end, said Ulbrich, “the talent is what makes this stuff works.”

Empowering the Audience

More and more industry players are looking at leveraging Generative AI to create new products for the audience. It was great to see Bakhtiar of AWS join this trend when she talked about the “strategic unlock” of enabling advertisers and streamers to deliver tailored experiences such as “custom streams” and hyper-personalized recommendations for Amazon Prime customers.

Kerris echoed these sentiments, highlighting Nvidia’s vision of “real-time AI in the stream.” He described future possibilities like dynamic content adjustments, interactive storytelling, and hyper-personalized advertisements, all powered by advanced AI. These innovations promise to enhance both audience engagement and content monetization.

The panelists acknowledged concerns about job displacement but highlighted the industry’s history of adapting to technological shifts. From sound and color in film to CGI, every advancement brought initial fear but eventually created more opportunities for storytellers. “It’s about leaning into the disruption,” Bakhtiar said, “and embracing the tools to captivate audiences in new ways.”

Ultimately, the session underscored that while AI is revolutionizing entertainment, the heart of the industry — human creativity and storytelling — remains unchanged. With these advancements, a new era of democratized content creation and immersive experiences is on the horizon.

As Ulbrich concluded, “AI has brought the joy back into filmmaking. I’m having fun again.”