The most dangerous thing AI could do to Hollywood isn’t to make a bad movie. Hollywood has been making bad movies perfectly well on its own for a century. It’s making a bad movie that is impossible to avoid.

Imagine an entertainment industry in which producing a plausible thriller, a passable comedy or a convincing celebrity interview which costs almost nothing. Imagine every social platform flooded with an endless supply of competent-looking videos, each engineered to capture a few seconds of attention. Imagine the old problem of finding something to watch becoming the much bigger problem of believing that anything is worth watching.

That future isn’t entirely here, but YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and social media are already giving us a preview. The supply of content keeps expanding; our evenings do not. Generative AI is poised to widen that gap even further. 

And in a world where content discovery is already a problem, trying to find something worthwhile to watch - especially something that is worth watching for more than 30 seconds - can become nearly impossible.

In that media environment, a company whose business is choosing what millions of people watch looks a little more interesting.

Netflix’s current problems are real ones.

Netflix has plenty of strategic problems. Engagement is a legitimate concern. Its advertising business is developing more slowly than management hoped. Its interface might be the best in the streaming industry, but it can make discovery feel like a chore. Its catalog contains its share of forgettable programming. Those are real challenges, not distractions invented by impatient Wall Street analysts and media reporters cranking out lazy hot takes.

But the familiar argument that Netflix is losing ground to YouTube and the creator economy misses a more consequential possibility: the more content becomes effortless to produce, the more valuable it may become to have someone make the first cut.

Even YouTube, a platform built around an almost limitless supply of creator content, has acknowledged the need to combat low-quality, repetitive AI material.

That creates an interesting paradox. As the cost of producing content falls, the value of deciding what deserves an audience may rise. 

The bottleneck is no longer simply production. It’s attention, discovery and trust. 

Netflix’s opportunity isn’t to outproduce the internet – or even its SVOD competitors. It is to become more useful in a world where the internet produces too much.

Curation is a feature, not a limitation.

This is where Netflix has an advantage that its critics sometimes overlook.

Netflix is not trying to offer every video that can be uploaded to a server. Its catalog is assembled through a combination of original productions, licensing deals and increasingly, partnerships with established creators. Its programming choices may be imperfect, its recommendation system occasionally baffling, and its cancellations infuriating. But the service still offers a relatively bounded entertainment experience.

You open Netflix expecting to find professionally presented movies, series, documentaries, comedy specials and other recognizable forms of entertainment. You might dislike the selection. You might spend 20 minutes browsing before choosing nothing. 

But you are not generally navigating a feed filled with thousands of anonymous, automatically generated videos competing for a few seconds of your attention. That distinction matters.

Curation does not guarantee quality. Hollywood has produced plenty of expensive failures, formulaic franchises and mediocre television. Nor does the presence of a familiar studio or creator guarantee that a particular show will be worth watching.

But a curated service offers a degree of accountability. Someone has decided that a title belongs in the catalog, and the platform has an established reputation to protect.

Netflix’s opportunity is to make that judgment increasingly valuable.

And side from the money offered by Netflix, that curated environment is one of the attractions of partnering with Netflix, Disney+ or other streaming platforms. For creators, that means the curated environment means your users aren’t being recommending slop after they watch your video. 

That curation also means that advertisers are more inclined to pay premium prices. Which is good for Netflix. But it also good for creators, who are beginning to negotiate ad sharing deals with the streamer as part of their content partnership.

This massive, curated audience is perhaps Netflix’s biggest asset. But it also has to be capable of leaning into that experience and improving content discovery for subscribers. 

To read more on this topic and other coverage of the media, subscribe to the Too Much TV newsletter.