Hollywood is Dead?

I keep seeing the same take online right now. "Hollywood is dead. AI just replaced filmmakers. Did you see what these kids made?"

And usually there's a link to some 3-minute short film that a couple of 20-year-olds produced using AI tools. The visuals look cinematic. The production quality is real. And the reaction is always the same. If they can do this from a laptop, what do we even need studios for?

I get why people are excited. But I think the conversation is missing something pretty big.

Today's advice

AI is a pattern machine. It extrapolates from existing work. It doesn't create from scratch. And that difference matters more than most people are giving it credit for right now.

Let me explain what I mean.

Every AI tool out there, whether it's making video, writing copy, generating images, composing music, is doing the same thing under the hood. It's pulling from massive amounts of existing human work, finding patterns in that work, and predicting what comes next based on those patterns.

That's extrapolation. It's remixing and recombining things that already exist.

It's not sitting down with a blank page and a point of view and deciding, "I need to say this thing that nobody has said yet."

That's still a human thing. At least for now.

The Amateurs Are Getting All the Attention

Here's what I find interesting about the "Hollywood is dead" conversation.

All the focus is on the newcomers. Someone with no film background uses AI to produce a short that looks like it belongs in a theater, and the internet loses its mind. I get it. That's a compelling story. And the work is genuinely impressive for what it is.

But here's the question nobody seems to be asking.

What do you think the actual experts are doing right now?

The directors who have spent 20 years learning how to build tension in a scene. The editors who understand pacing at a level most people can't even articulate. The visual effects artists who have been pushing boundaries since before AI was part of the conversation.

They're not sitting around watching amateurs have all the fun. They're learning the same tools. And they're bringing something to those tools that the amateurs don't have yet. Decades of craft. Storytelling instincts. An understanding of what makes something land with an audience versus what just looks cool for three minutes.

When the experts start showing what they can do with AI, it's going to be a totally different conversation. The amateurs are making impressive demos. The professionals are going to make the work that actually changes things.

We just haven't seen it yet. Give it time.

What AI Is Actually Good At (and Where It Falls Short)

I want to be fair here because I use AI in my own work every day. I'm not anti-AI. I'm pro-understanding-what-it-actually-is.

AI is great at speed. It can generate a first draft, brainstorm ideas, research a topic, and produce variations faster than any human can. That's real value. I've seen it firsthand running Vervology. We use AI tools regularly, and they save us time on things that used to take hours.

But here's where it falls short. AI doesn't have a perspective. It doesn't have opinions formed by years of experience. It doesn't know your customers the way you do. It can't look at your business and say, "This is the story we need to tell right now, and here's why."

I see this in marketing all the time. Someone uses AI to write a blog post or a social media caption. It reads fine. Clean grammar. Logical structure. But it doesn't say anything. There's no point of view behind it. No lived experience informing the message. No reason for the reader to trust it over the hundred other AI-generated posts that sound exactly the same.

The output looks right. But there's nothing behind it.

This Isn't Just a Hollywood Problem

This same thing is playing out across every industry right now.

In design. In marketing. In content creation. In business strategy. The tools are getting better and more accessible, and that's great. But accessibility doesn't replace expertise. It just changes the playing field.

Think about it like this. When desktop publishing software came out, everyone could suddenly make flyers and brochures. Did that put graphic designers out of work? No. It just made the gap between amateur work and professional work more obvious. The people who understood design principles still produced better work. The tools just let them do it faster.

Same thing happened when website builders came along. Suddenly anyone could make a website. But the sites built by people who understood user experience, content strategy, and conversion paths still outperformed the ones that just looked okay on the surface.

AI is the same story, just moving faster and at a bigger scale.

So What Does This Mean for You?

If you're using AI in your business right now, and I think most of us should be, the question worth asking is this: am I using it to amplify what I already know, or am I using it to skip the thinking entirely?

There's a real difference.

Using AI to move faster on things you already understand? That's a multiplier. You're bringing the strategy, the experience, the judgment. AI handles the grunt work. That's a good setup.

Handing everything over to AI and hoping the output is good enough? That's where things start to look and sound like everyone else. And blending in has never been a winning strategy. Not in marketing. Not in content. Not in business.

The people who are going to come out ahead in all of this are the ones who treat AI like what it is. A tool. A fast, capable, increasingly impressive tool. But still a tool.

The thinking, the creativity, the point of view, that still has to come from you.

Here's how to start

Take an honest look at how you're using AI today. Are you using it to speed up work that you're still guiding and directing? Or are you using it as a shortcut to avoid doing the hard parts yourself?

If it's the first one, keep going. You're using it the right way.

If it's the second one, pull back a little. Bring more of your own thinking into the process. Use AI for the first draft, but make the final version yours. Use it to research and brainstorm, but make the strategic decisions yourself. Use it to produce more, but make sure what you're producing actually has something to say.

And the next time someone tells you Hollywood is dead because a couple of amateurs made a cool short film with AI, remember this.

The amateurs are just getting started. But so are the experts.

And the experts have a 20-year head start on the part that actually matters.

This is part one of a three-part series this week on AI and your business. On Wednesday, I'll talk about why your brand is the one thing AI can't copy, and why that makes it your best defense right now. Then on Friday, I'll get into the practical side of how to actually manage your AI tools like a team. See you Wednesday.

Best, Jono