Jeffrey Katzenberg gets much of the credit for overseeing the Disney Renaissance of the late 80s and early 90s, and then in 1994 he became the “K” in “Dreamworks SKG,” and continued his winning streak with Shrek, Madagascar, and Kung Fu Panda.

But then he founded Quibi, which was born and died in 2020. And now, in a 2,394-word X post on Wednesday, Katzemberg argues that resistance is futile, and the entertainment industry must embrace AI or else.

“To resist technology is to risk irrelevance,” Katzenberg writes, later adding, “Hollywood needs to accept that AI is not going away.”

He goes about making this point in puzzling ways. In part, he argues his case by telling the often-told story of John Philip Sousa’s resistance to recorded music. “His campaign helped create the Copyright Act of 1909. He did not stop the technology. He changed the terms under which it could use his work,” Katzenberg’s essay notes.

But Katzenberg also gives a reverent nod to the orchestra pit musicians of pre-talkie movie houses, whose livelihoods were wiped out by sound motion pictures. “They were not fools, and they were not Luddites. They were right. Those pit jobs did not come back,” he writes.

For whatever reason, Katzenberg doesn’t note that Luddites were in dire economic straits too, and fought a precise and tactical campaign aimed at both preserving their way of life and sparing the machines and people that didn’t affect them despite a draconian new law making their vandalism a capital crime.

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