Netflix chief Ted Sarandos does not see artificial intelligence as an "existential" threat to creativity, but a powerful tool. Sarandos recently spoke with Rob Lowe on his podcast "Literally! with Rob Lowe" about AI in the wake of the actors and writers strikes last year and its looming impact on the entertainment industry. "The sense that AI was going to be the next existential thing, I don’t know if that’s true. I still don’t know if that’s true," Sarandos said.
While the unions got several AI regulations in place, Lowe asked Sarandos if he thought the issue had essentially been "punted" to the next round of negotiations in a few years. "I think that AI is a creator's tool, not a creative tool," Sarandos said. "And I think that the creators who learn to use these tools better than everyone else are gonna win…not companies who create, but people who create.
It’s feasible that AI can replicate or imitate those things, but there’s something about the authenticity and the reality of human experience that people see, and they can also see when it’s inauthentic," he added. Sarandos pointed to "Squid Game," the breakaway hit on Netflix in 2021, pulling in 1.656 billion hours of viewing in the first 28 days of its release, with 142 million member households tuning in for at least two minutes of the show, per Variety.