What would you say the key point is in the video then? I have watched it but he meanders all over the place and makes quite noticeable mistakes confusing completely different AI technologies so I wasn't clear on the point he was making apart from he doesn't like AI..or some types of AI. I'm also not convinced about his arguments either, he cites the dislike ratio on the Coca-Cola advert as proof of the growing backlash against genAI but are there any sales figures to show Coca-Cola have lost a lot of sales? I've never seen any and doubt it. There's also been a backlash against AI in gaming as well and one of the biggest games receiving this is Arc Raiders with Eurogamer giving it two stars out of five for its use of LLM technology for voice lines....but it's also been one of the biggest hits of the year with surprisingly large player counts so that backlash didn't go far.
Certainly I think there is truth to the claims about LLM generated artwork and video needing so much corrective work there's no point in using the genAI tool in the first place. I'd read an article on a company that had been told they needed to work with a genAI prompter instead of a digital artist to make the scene they wanted and what they found was that while the genAI tool could produce a decent image close to what they're wanting, they couldn't refine it in anyway - the first image had too few people so they asked for more but then they didn't just get more people it also changed the scene and where the people were. So they asked for slightly less people and moved to a different position but the tools can't do that, they can only keep generating scenes until one suits what's needed which may not happen whereas a digital artist could modify the scene to suit exactly what was wanted.
Although LLMs are meant to be at their strongest when coding that seems to be showing cracks with studies showing that generated code doesn't save any time because it needs more time to be corrected and check it works correctly.
Certainly I'd like to think there's some truth in what he's saying but I'm not convinced since I'm frequently surprised how people are either indifferent to LLM generated items or will keep accepting and using them even though they keep providing wrong answers. Even here there's been a number of posts defending the technology even though photographers are an area where the tools are most damaging.
Mmmm, I posted a reply last night and it seems to have vanished. And yes, these videos are always a bit of a ramble.
The main point, I think, is that in spite of fears that Generative AI would have a serious detrimental impact on his business, it isn't.
He says that this has been the best year ever for business, and suggests at least part of the explanation, based on what his clients say, is that they are avoiding AI because of costs, technical limitations and the reaction from their customers to the use of AI in their adverts.
The Cocoa Cola ad, plus the comments, were used to support his own experience, and to illustrate some of the problems with AI.
At the time, CGI was seen as posing a similar threat, but in practice it didn't affect his business either, hence the comparison with CGI.
Overall, I think he is making the same points that you make in your post, but through his eyes as a high end commercial/advertising photographer.
I don't think he dislikes AI, he uses it himself for things he feels it's useful for e.g he edits his YouTube videos with AI, but not his "commercial" work. I don't dislike AI, but feel it needs to be used for the right task and carefully managed.
I especially agree with your penultimate point and made a similar, more general point in an earlier post. Despite the evidence, marketing always seems to win with these things. As a non photographic example, I saw the results of a survey somewhere (I can't remember where) that 40% of people trust the advice given by ChatGPT over the advice given by their Doctor.
I fear, that many people just don't care, and we end up with what the moneymakers, marketers, want us to have, regardless of what we need or should be wanting.
EDIT: as an afterthought, I should say that I watch a lot of Scott's videos, and he often discusses AI, so I am unavoidably looking at this video with a good idea of his experiences and opinions. This is bound to affect how I am interpreting what he is saying.
EDIT: on the same theme of the public's response to AI, I posted this earlier in the year:
