From motorized projectors to generative AI: cultural conflicts over labor automation in Hollywood

Abstract Recent discourse around generative artificial intelligence has characterized its implications for creative labor as wholly unprecedented. This article challenges that framing by situating generative A.I. within a longer history of technological change in Hollywood. We conduct a historical analysis of three cases in which an emerging technology promised to automate aspects of creative production: the spread of motorized film projectors in the early 1900s, the rise of computer-based editing software in the mid-1980s, and the introduction of screenwriting software in the late 1980s. Through a content analysis of newspaper and industry trade publications, this analysis finds that whether and how a technology is understood as "automating" by different sets of actors is not simply a technical determination but a culturally constructed one, shaped by competing narratives among workers, management, and the public. Each case is characterized by a different kind of narrative conflict: projectionists fought over the definition of professional skill; film editors confronted accelerated workflows and managerial interference; and screenwriters policed barriers to entry against would-be "hacks." In each of these narrative conflicts, we point to patterned similarities to and differences from contemporary conflicts over generative A.I. in Hollywood.