Netflix’s search for an AI Product Manager with a salary range of $300,000 to $900,000 has widely stirred reactions of disgust and frustration amid the SAG-AFTRA and WGA double strike.
Writers and actors are striking, in part, for new industry standards around artificial intelligence and the threat such technology potentially presents to creatives. And while there are many ways that Netflix may be employing artificial intelligence to its streaming platform — some that impact writers and actors, others that don’t — at the very least, the optics of the new hire coming at this time could be better.
Netflix declined to comment to TheWrap on the controversy, nor offered additional information about the nature of the position. A similar position was recently posted at Disney.
Responding to the job listing, which got attention after a Tuesday report from The Intercept went viral, Emmy-winning TV writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (“Lost,” “The Witcher”) emphasized that such a price tag for a job listing was more than he’d ever made in a year, “by far.”
“Pleading poverty while recruiting very (more than I’ve ever made in a year by far) well-paid generals for your soulless army of silicon plagiarists is not a good look,” he wrote on Twitter. “They are in this to break us, and they don’t care who sees. We must break them back.”
Echoing Grillo-Marxuach, filmmaker Joe Russo tweeted that “Netflix is willing to pay an AI plagiarist more than they were willing to buy our screenplay.”
Journalist Donna Dickens wrote, “Don’t forget! When Netflix says they’re hiring an ‘AI Product Manager,’ they’re wanting to pay someone $900,000 per year to be an overseer of indentured servants in developing countries.”
Artist Natalie Dombois said, “this is deeply concerning. I hope the dudes that claimed ‘this will help artists’ finally wake up. And I hope they realize that it’s purely capitalistic exploitation.”
Read below for more humorous and serious reactions to the moves made by both Netflix and Disney in the controversial search for AI employees: