By Jonathan Marquez | Truth Crave Civic

I actually sympathize with the frustration behind Sunny Hostin’s comments about Hollywood gatekeeping.

If you have spent years trying to get your stories made and keep running into closed doors—particularly as a creator trying to tell Black and brown stories—I understand why an emerging technology that appears to let you bypass those doors might sound appealing.

But I think there is a serious contradiction in that argument.

If Hollywood gatekeeping is the problem, why does the solution have to be AI replacing the jobs of the very people you’re trying to tell the stories of?

That is the question I kept coming back to after watching Hostin discuss her partnership with an AI film company and explain that she had licensed her image to the company.

If Hollywood refuses to make your project, why does the alternative have to be removing human labor from the production?

Did you try taking the project to the Canadian film industry? The Mexican film industry? Other countries have entire film ecosystems where American productions already go to make movies and television. Maybe the project wouldn’t be made in Hollywood—but you could still make it, especially as a wealthy woman who doesn’t have to turn her life around to get these projects made outside the United States.

And more importantly, it would still generate jobs.

Actual jobs for writers, actors, directors, cinematographers, editors, set designers, electricians, painters, carpenters, costume designers, dancers and countless other workers.

That part of the conversation matters because we are talking about something bigger than whether one particular movie gets made.

We are talking about what the film industry actually represents.

The film industry created an ecosystem for artists

Before the modern entertainment industry developed, extraordinary artistic talent did not necessarily translate into a sustainable career.

A person could be a talented writer, performer, painter, dancer, carpenter or designer and still have very limited opportunities to make a living from those abilities.

The growth of the film industry changed that.

Film didn’t just create movie-star jobs. It created an enormous ecosystem of employment around creative work. Writers could write scripts. Actors could perform. Painters could work on sets. Carpenters could build them. Electricians could light them. Costume designers could dress them. Dancers could perform in them. Editors, cinematographers, makeup artists, sound technicians and countless other workers could build careers around the production of entertainment.

That is what makes the film industry precious.

It turned creative talent into an economic ecosystem.

And now we are being told that because Hollywood has failed to give enough people opportunities, the answer is to build technology that can eliminate even more of the jobs that made the industry valuable in the first place.

That doesn’t dismantle the gatekeeping.

It dismantles the economic system around creative work.

Telling stories isn’t the only goal

I understand the argument that AI could allow creators who have been ignored by Hollywood to finally tell their stories.

But telling stories is only one part of what makes a creative industry valuable.

Creating work for artists is another.

A movie isn’t just the final two hours that audiences watch. It is the hundreds or thousands of human decisions, skills and jobs that can go into producing those two hours.

So when we celebrate a technology because it allows one person to bypass the traditional system, we should also ask what happens to everyone who used to make up that system.

If AI makes it cheaper to create a movie but eliminates the people who would have been hired to make that movie, we have to be honest about what we’re calling progress.

Because a cheaper movie isn’t necessarily a better future for artists.

And I don’t think we should automatically accept the argument that replacing human creative labor is somehow liberation simply because the traditional gatekeepers have been terrible at opening the door.

And then there’s the paycheck

One part of Hostin’s explanation particularly caught my attention: “I licensed my image to an AI company.”

Girl… what a funny way to say:

“I accepted a paycheck to become their propagandist.”

Because let’s be honest about the incentive here.

AI companies need people to believe that their technology is not a threat to creative workers but an opportunity for them. They need examples that demonstrate how AI can supposedly democratize filmmaking and give marginalized creators access to opportunities that Hollywood denied them.

And stories like this are perfect for that argument.

But I’m not falling for it.

You can sympathize with someone who has been locked out of Hollywood and still question the solution they’re promoting.

You can believe Black and brown stories deserve to be told and still believe Black and brown artists deserve the jobs created by telling those stories.

Those ideas are not contradictory.

In fact, I think they belong together.

Because if our answer to Hollywood’s failure to employ enough diverse artists is to create a new system that requires fewer artists altogether, we haven’t solved the problem.

We’ve just changed who gets left out.

And Sunny, you might be telling Black stories.

That doesn’t mean we’re going to watch your Black AI slop.