Heated Rivalry became a sensation when it started airing last winter for many reasons – great storytelling, a fantastic soundtrack, many steamy scenes – but the Cinderella story of its two young leads can’t be overlooked. Suddenly inescapable, Connor Storrie (most recently seen in a campaign for Tiffany&Co) and Hudson Williams (starring in an ad for Peloton that might do more for the company than Covid ever did) were, until last year, jobbing actors and restaurant servers. Their meteoric rise is something to be celebrated – and in the current climate, it might be the last time it happens.
There has been much talk about the impact of AI on Hollywood; it was one of the main issues of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023. More recently, concerns have been raised about the use of an AI-generated version of the late actor Val Kilmer for a forthcoming film. But aside from a handful of high-profile controversies, AI hasn’t made a massive impact on the mainstream film world just yet. A partnership between OpenAI and Disney was cancelled in March 2026 as OpenAI’s Sora app was discontinued. AI-generated “actor” Tilly Norwood generated a lot of controversy and conversation but has yet to star in a major project.
Despite this, there are two much more immediate concerns for aspiring young actors that will likely impact them well before AI-generated scripts and movie stars. The first is the rise of AI generated industrials – the unsexy training and educational videos that might never show up on an Oscars reel but pay the bills. The second is the AI-driven reduction in good old fashioned “day jobs” – the low impact 9-5 office gigs that gave aspiring creatives a steady paycheck and let them workshop material in between boring meetings. These changes won’t impact young actors with trust funds or family in the industry, but for actors without resources and connections like Storrie and Williams, it could kill their chances before they even start.
You might not know the term “industrial,” but if you’ve ever sat through a corporate training seminar with videos about how not to sexually harass a colleague or how to avoid doing insider trading, you know what one is. I’ve built several of these for virtual reality platforms and worked with actors like Annapurna Sriram (whose latest feature, coincidentally, also stars Heated Rivalry’s François Arnaud) and Eulone Gooding (who has appeared in Law & Order: SVU). But the industrial pipeline has been starting to dry up as platforms like Synthesia allow companies to produce training content at scale at a fraction of the cost.
The other transformation that can be partially attributed to AI is the death of the “clockwatchers” job. For many years, aspiring creatives could rely on mindless temp roles to pay the bills; this is in fact the origin story for Severance creator Dan Erickson, who worked a dull office gig while working on his script. But as awful as that job was, it was a paycheck that gave him the time and space to work on his creative projects. And as AI continues to mature, those jobs are more likely to disappear.
Other typical starving artist jobs are starting to be disrupted as well. Driving for Lyft or Uber, once a favored way to make money between auditions, is no longer a secure option as Waymo spreads throughout LA. Serving and bartending gigs still exist, but rising competition for those jobs now that other avenues are closed off means that lots of people will still be left out in the cold.
What this all ultimately means is a bifurcated creative class, where people with money and connections are able to pursue arts careers and those without won’t even have a chance to try. And even people with experience and past success are not immune to this – the Hollywood Reporter recently ran a piece by an Emmy-nominated writer who is now doing construction work.
There are no easy solutions to this. For many years, there was a tacit agreement between companies and the wider world – they would provide jobs that might not have been mission critical but provided people with outlets for work and some sort of income; in exchange, workers were kept busy and consumed products. The last few years and rounds of layoffs have shown that era has come to an end, and until companies are forced to feel some level of social responsibility again, companies will remain lean.
For the time being, then, we’re left with a world where success in the creative arts will be ever more concentrated among the wealthy, and that’s not a world anyone really wants. Seeing a star break out, whether because they were discovered at a soda shop or submitted a tape for a little Canadian hockey drama, is a magical experience, and one that will become impossible to achieve soon.
