From services to showbiz, jobs in all sectors hit by AI. What's next?

The dreaded invasion of artificial intelligence (AI) in the tech industry has made its way to the empire of the entertainment industry, threatening jobs in the industry and prompting strikes supported by major parties in the industry.

Since the beginning of this year, tech experts like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have drawn attention to the risks posed by one of science's latest innovations and have emphasised the importance of regulations for the use of generative AI.

According to Euro News, hundreds of industry leaders, including Altman, signed a letter in May that warned that "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war".

Additionally, many company executives in the tech industry have cited AI as the reason behind the thousands of layoffs that have occurred over the past few months.

The News reported that education technology company Chegg recently disclosed that it was letting go of 80, or 4%, of its employees "to better position the company to execute against its AI strategy and to create long-term, sustainable value for its students and investors.”

Additionally, in April, file-storage service Dropbox, while citing AI as the reason, said it was cutting 16% of its workforce.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, in a note to his staff related to the job cuts, said: “Over the last few months, AI has captured the world’s collective imagination, expanding the potential market for our next generation of AI-powered products more rapidly than any of us could have anticipated.

“Our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development.”

In recent news, AI has been highlighted as a threat to jobs in the creative industries of filmmaking and the arts, such as acting, writing, and more.

The advent of AI in the industry was followed by continued protests from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) at the picket lines as they demanded strict regulation of the technology and "higher compensation for the working-class actors and other gains," according to Reuters.