---
type: claim
domain: entertainment
description: "Studios use GenAI to make existing workflows cheaper (sustaining/progressive syntheticization) while independents start fully synthetic and add human direction (disruptive/progressive control) — the same technology produces opposite strategic outcomes depending on the user's starting point"
confidence: likely
source: "Clay, synthesized from Doug Shapiro's 'How Far Will AI Video Go?' and 'AI Use Cases in Hollywood' (The Mediator, 2023-2025)"
created: 2026-03-06
---

# GenAI is simultaneously sustaining and disruptive depending on whether users pursue progressive syntheticization or progressive control

Christensen's disruption theory predicts that incumbents adopt new technology to improve existing processes (sustaining innovation) while entrants use it to create new value networks (disruptive innovation). GenAI in entertainment follows this pattern with unusual clarity because the same underlying technology — video generation models, AI editing tools, cost-collapsing compute — produces opposite strategic outcomes depending on who deploys it and how.

**Progressive syntheticization** is the studio path. Hollywood integrates GenAI into existing workflows: AI-assisted VFX, automated rotoscoping, synthetic B-roll, AI-enhanced editing. The goal is to make the current production process cheaper and faster while maintaining the same quality standards, deal structures, and distribution channels. Studios allocated less than 3% of budgets to GenAI in 2025 while simultaneously suing ByteDance over training data. This is classic sustaining innovation — it improves the incumbent's cost structure but doesn't change who makes content or how it reaches audiences.

**Progressive control** is the independent path. Creators start with fully synthetic output — text-to-video generators, AI image models, synthetic voices — and progressively add human creative direction as tools improve. They don't need soundstages, crews, or $200M budgets. A 9-person team produced an animated film for ~$700K. The starting point is radically different: not "how do we make our existing process cheaper?" but "what can we create with near-zero production cost?" This enters low on traditional quality metrics but improves fast as tools mature.

The disruptive path is the dangerous one for incumbents. Progressive syntheticization saves studios money but doesn't change the competitive landscape. Progressive control creates an entirely new class of competitor — millions of creators who couldn't previously participate in video storytelling — and redefines quality around attributes like authenticity, community connection, and format innovation rather than production value.

Evidence from Shapiro's framework: non-ATL production costs (80% of a $200M blockbuster budget) will converge with the cost of compute over time. Studios see this as cost savings; independents see it as the elimination of the primary barrier to entry.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[media disruption follows two sequential phases as distribution moats fall first and creation moats fall second]] — the creation moat is the one GenAI collapses
- [[the media attractor state is community-filtered IP with AI-collapsed production costs where content becomes a loss leader for the scarce complements of fandom community and ownership]] — progressive control feeds the attractor state; progressive syntheticization delays it
- [[good management causes disruption because rational resource allocation systematically favors sustaining innovation over disruptive opportunities]] — explains why studios pursue syntheticization

Topics:
- [[entertainment]]
- [[teleological-economics]]
