‘AI Will Disrupt Nollywood Soon’ — Warns Saudi Arabia-Based Nigerian Professor

As more Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools become mainstream globally, entertainment industries, especially film, are grappling with potential realities that might disrupt work as usual.

It is in light of this that researcher, Prof Samuel Andrews, has called on Nollywood to prepare itself for the inevitable AI disruption and plan ahead to prevent itself from getting the short end of the stick.

AI is a technological intervention, which has disrupted the creative spaces and according to Andrews, in the film industry globally including Nigeria, the impact of AI interventions in the creative productive modes are apparent.

Andrews, a Saudi Arabia-based Professor of Intellectual Property Law said, “AI and computer programs-software have improved not just the aesthetic feel of films but it has enabled informational, entertainment, educational and entrepreneurial objectives of creators. It has also become a legitimate legal tool for creators to protect, promote and enforce their copyright and other intellectual property rights.

“Counterfactually, AI has become a worrisome human intervention not only in the creative spaces but in the national security structures of countries, personal safety of people, health care sectors and social-moral Order of societies,” he said.

He noted that like every new technology, AI generates fear, risk and dangers to humanity. The unknowns, lack of consistent regulatory framework and consensually accepted legal regimes have increased public anxiety.

“The reality and concerns include loss of jobs particular within the lower cadre of creative productions.

“Artists and downstream creatives like graphic artists, camera persons, make-up artists and auxiliary performers within a production crew are at certain risk of losing their gainful employment.

“Nollywood will feel this reality too and soon,” Andrews noted.

He also called on the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) to get ahead of the AI generative and assistive movement by using its administrative law powers under the new copyright regime to make rules and set norms on how it may support creativity around the AI generative and assistive input-output of works.

He said, “even in the Nollywood industry, AI has been deployed in its creative productions. The animations and voice-over features in recent Nollywood films are all enabled by AI.

“What the Nollywood industry needs now is the scaling of its use of AI and its involvement in the entrepreneurial side of being investors in generative AI especially for creating cinematic works.

“From my research and studies as a Nollywood legal scholar, it has the ingenuity of creating and evolving within the technological disruptions,” Andrews said.