Faster, Cheaper, Better AI Content— Pick One. Pick Faster.
Seedance 2.0 and Kling 3.0 launched days apart—delivering faster and better generative AI video. Hollywood is focused on cheaper. That is a compelling story but the wrong variable.
The popular take on generative AI is that it will make existing movie and TV productions cheaper across the entire production supply chain: better visual effects (VFX) and cheaper pre-production. Disney Chairman James Gorman recently shared that this is a strategic objective for Disney’s new Chief Creative Officer Dana Walden. Its partnership with OpenAI also seems to be more about company-wide operational efficiencies and cost reduction.
Albert Cheng—Amazon’s new Head of AI Studios, Amazon MGM Studios—is leading a team charged with developing new AI tools that he said “will cut costs and streamline the creative process.”
This framing is reasonable and compelling for investors. “Cheaper” is the variable with the easier story to tell: generative AI disruption makes prices go down and profits across the production supply chain go up.
This framing also tells investors what they want to hear. So it misses what matters—”Faster” is the variable that will change marketplaces more than “cheaper”.
ByteDance launched its new AI video model Seedance 2.0 over the weekend. The AI video generation model processes images, videos, audio, and text simultaneously (“multimodal”) to create short videos with automatic sound effects . Early users are producing multi-shot scenes with synchronized sound effects, music and dialogue in multiple languages. Kuaishou launched its competing model Kling 3.0 last week with similar features and similar curator enthusiasm.
The faster creators using AI tools produce content, the less appealing traditional distribution channels are.
