Prime Video's AI Pitch: Cheaper Production, More Creative Risk

Amazon's Prime Video international chief, Kelly Day, told the RTS London Convention that AI brings down costs, meaning more stories can be made, more diverse voices can get heard and more creative risks get taken. It is a chain of reasoning with several soft links in it, so let two of them argue it out. Optimist: the cost of production is a real constraint — risky scripts die in budget meetings, so a cheaper floor means more of them survive. Skeptic: cost was never the gate; the gate is how many slots get commissioned and promoted. Making something cheaper doesn't make anyone braver about greenlighting it. Optimist: fine, then the convention speech will be tested by what actually appears on the service. Skeptic: and 'more stories can be made' has never once meant 'more good stories', which is a complaint people were making about cheaper cameras long before anyone had a GPU.