Nov 6, 2025
Alex Armstrong
Netflix recently announced that they're going all in on generative AI. In their recent quarterly earnings report, the streaming giant declared itself "very well positioned to effectively leverage ongoing advances in AI," signaling what could be a major turning point for how mainstream entertainment gets made. This isn't some experimental side project anymore. This is Netflix, one of the industry's biggest players, publicly committing to weaving AI into their production process.
Netflix’s Positioning on AI
To be fair, Netflix isn't talking about replacing entire production teams with algorithms. CEO Ted Sarandos was careful to frame AI as a tool for creatives rather than a replacement for them. "It takes a great artist to make something great," he told investors. The company has already started using generative AI in practical ways: creating a building collapse scene in the Argentine series "The Eternaut," digitally de-aging characters in "Happy Gilmore 2," and helping visualize wardrobe and set designs during pre-production for "Billionaires' Bunker."
At face value, Netflix sees AI as something that makes creatives more efficient, helps them tell stories "better, faster, and in new ways." It's positioned as an enhancement, not a wholesale replacement of the filmmaking process. But here's where things get complicated: what starts as efficiency gains and creative tools can quickly become something much more significant when the economics are considered.
Why This Is a Growing Concern
The entertainment world isn't buying the reassurances, at least not entirely. Artists and crew members across the industry have been vocal about their concerns, particularly around visual effects work and other specialized crafts that took years to master. The worry isn't just philosophical. It's practical. If an AI tool can generate a convincing building collapse or age a character decades younger in a fraction of the time and cost, what happens to the VFX artists who built their careers on that expertise?
This concern ramped up even more recently when OpenAI released Sora 2, their advanced video generation model, without adequate safeguards to prevent deepfaking actors. SAG-AFTRA and actors like Bryan Cranston had to publicly push for stronger protections. It's a reminder that as these tools become more powerful, the stakes get higher. The technology is moving faster than the guardrails, and that makes people understandably uncomfortable.
Nobody seriously believes AI can replace human creativity. The spark of imagination, the emotional intelligence behind a great performance, the instinct that makes a scene feel real rather than technically correct but soulless are distinctly human. But creativity alone doesn't pay the bills. Studios do. And if generative AI continues advancing while getting cheaper and faster, the business case becomes harder to ignore.
How This Shapes The Future
On one hand, everyone can agree that nothing truly replaces human craftsmanship. Netflix itself is saying this, at least publicly. On the other hand, entertainment is a business, and businesses optimize for cost and efficiency. As generative AI gets better at handling tasks that once required teams of specialized professionals, the economic pressure to adopt these tools grows exponentially.
That's what makes Netflix's announcement feel like a defining moment. When one of the biggest content producers in the world commits publicly to embracing AI, it gives permission to everyone else to do the same. If Netflix demonstrates that they can produce high-quality content faster and cheaper with AI assistance, the competitive pressure to follow suit becomes substantial.
The hope is that AI becomes a tool that elevates human creativity rather than replaces it, that it handles the tedious technical work and frees artists to focus on the parts that matter most. But the very real fear is that once the door opens and these tools prove their cost-effectiveness, the industry won't stop at augmentation. The fear is that traditional craftsmanship, the skills that take years to develop, will be gradually devalued as algorithms take over more and more of the production pipeline and disregard the soul of creativity.
What happens next will depend on how the industry balances artistry and business pressures to preserve the human element that defines what art and entertainment truly are. This shift is fundamental to Wirestock’s ethos behind building a community and platform that recognizes the irreplaceable value of human craftsmanship, ensuring that creators are fairly compensated for their work and elevated rather than replaced by technology.