It sounds as though, contrary to earlier reports, that WWE has not tapped out to the AI overlords.
Last week, controversy erupted in the world of WWE when Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported that the company had hired Cyrus Kowsari as Senior Director of Crestive Strategy. According to Meltzer, Kowsari was brought in with the direct purpose of transitioning WWE towards AI-based storytelling, going as far as saying that chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque introduced Kowsari to the creative staff as a start to the process.
Due to the polarizing public perception of AI in the modern world, particularly regarding the completion of human tasks, the move was met with initial widespread criticism.
However, a report from Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp seems to suggest that that is far from the case.
“The WWE creative team is of the impression the new hire is being brought in to find ways to help using AI to remove background noise of shots or organize files quickly, or work on production elements as opposed to creative storylines,” Sapp’s report notes.
To clarify, Sapp considers Kowsari’s hiring as a means to further optimize pre-existing AI tools that WWE’s creative staff already has on hand, rather than expand AI to replace human writers. The report also states that no one within WWE has used AI for more than minutes at a time, simply using it to streamline creative processes and provide starting points instead of writing an entire show.
"[Those tools have] mostly been used as a glorified creative assistant to look up things like, the last time two wrestlers had a match," wrote Sapp in his report. "One source familiar with the process said that it would be more of a 'not starting with a blank page' approach than 'write the show for us'."
So far, the use of AI has drawn positive reviews from members of WWE’s creative team, with one production employee saying that the team works ‘insane, nonstop’ hours and that any assistance in their day-to-day processes is greatly appreciated.
The report continued to stress that AI will not be used to come up with storylines on its own, and that will remain the duties of the production staff. That restraint will sit well with the talent, as they generally scoffed at the idea that AI can replace some of WWE’s top writers and creative minds.
“A top talent said, ‘Michael Hayes, Paul Heyman and Ed Koskey are not AI,’ and took exception to the belief that AI storylines were going to happen," Sapp added.
While AI has found itself a spot in WWE’s creative process, the important and final decisions remain in human hands.
