As investors wager on humanity, the world will reject AI failures

The creative industries are expected to be overtaken by AI slop

However, some of the wealthiest people in the world are placing bets against that. This is what regular investors ought to do.

It is a bold offer. Bill Ackman has made a £64 billion bid through his hedge fund Pershing sq\. for Universal Music, one of the biggest music companies in the world and a producer of Taylor Swift and other artists.

It is a complicated transaction that would relocate the company's listing from Amsterdam to New York and involve both cash and shares.

Whether the deal is successful or not is yet to be determined. French billionaire Vincent Bollor, who owns 18% of the business, and its British CEO Lucian Grainge, who is largely responsible for overseeing the switch from analog to digital music, will likely make the final decision. According to forecasts, the bid has a 37% chance of winning by June 30.

BFIA problems nowadays. It is by no means the only recent media sensation. Following a dispute with Netflix, the Ellison family-controlled and financed Paramount Skydance has agreed to pay over £100 billion for Warner Bros., the studio in charge of a vast film library, along with news channel CNN and sports broadcaster TNT. Although regulatory approval is still required in the markets where it operates, the deal has been reached and there is currently little to prevent it from taking place.

AI failures are being bet against by investors.

Both of the major bids share a similar theme. The idea that humans will continue to create and govern the arts is being bet with enormous sums of money. That contradicts the market's general hype.

We've read a lot about the development of AI and the enormous sums of money being invested in the data centers and software that will enable extremely intelligent chatbots. While well-known behemoths like Google, Meta, and Elon Musk's X have been investing enormous sums of money in creating their own systems, the industry's top firms, like OpenAI and Anthropic, could potentially be worth more than £1 trillion if they list their shares later this year.

The creative industries are intended to be at the forefront of AI's replacement. The music tracks produced by the bots can be unexpectedly well-liked. Numerous AI-generated songs have reached the top of the streaming charts, and services like ChatGPT and Google Gemini provide tools for creating music. Selecting a genre, developing a theme, and uploading a song to Google Music or Spotify are all simple processes. It can yield substantial profits.

AI actors can also take the place of human actors; this also applies to technicians, directors, and screenwriters. In fact, Netflix paid £600 million last month for InterPositive, an AI start-up supported by actor Ben Affleck that is creating post-production tools for the film industry. Reports of AI assisting with scripts have already surfaced, and it might not be long before the bots appear on the big screen.

Given that anyone with a laptop and a subscription to ChatGPT or Claude AI can produce films, why would anyone in their right mind want to spend tens of billions on a music label or film studio?

According to conventional wisdom, AI-generated bots or digitally recreated megastars from the past will act in films of every conceivable genre that are written for you and directed in any style you choose. Every taste will be accommodated, and you might soon be able to select from a variety of plot twists or conclusions based on your own preferences. Conventional movies will be completed.

Similarly, AI-generated Taylor Swift knockoffs and songs from every conceivable musical genre, including jazz, soul, and classical, will soon overtake streaming apps. Each of us will have the ability to compile our own unique playlists, which will be composed of a variety of singers, musicians, and styles that are specifically suited to our own moods or tastes.

Swift, Taylor.

The bots don't need to worry Taylor Swift.

Nothing new can be created by AI slop.

Well, maybe. However, it's obvious that Warner and Universal's billionaire bidders have a point. Human ingenuity will endure in the end. The chatbots are able to study the libraries, create a reasonable facsimile, and recreate stories or songs that already exist. However, they are incapable of producing anything new; they lack personality, have no understanding of our emotions, and will never be able to make us laugh, cry, or dance.

It's unlikely that chatbots will completely destroy industries, but they might alter how they operate. Investors are investing enormous sums of money in AI start-ups because they believe the systems will be able to replace almost all human endeavors.

Some of the wealthiest people on the planet are placing bets against the success of AI slop. Ordinary investors ought to follow suit.