Marketplace Morning Reports' new Skin in the Game series explores what we can learn about

money and careers from the $300 billion video game industry. Plus, here how an Oakland-based

program helps young people get the skills they need to break into this booming industry.

Listen to Skin in the Game and more from the Marketplace Morning Report wherever you get your

podcasts. As much of Hollywood remains on strike, the studios go on an AI hiring spree.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Lily Dremolley.

Hollywood is now a month into its first double strike since 1960. The writer's guild,

which hit the picket line in May, and now the actors union both want higher pay and residuals

from the big studios. But earlier this week when I spoke to people picketing on the sidewalk

outside Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, another issue came up a lot. There's been a lot of

discussion about AI and how it's going to just easily replace and take away the work of actors.

I think for a lot of people it always felt like it was far off in the future,

and so they didn't have to think about it. And now the future is mostly here. For years,

we've been told, well, this kind of technology, it can't replace creative jobs,

but if you are ready to lower the level of quality that you want to work with, then it can take those

jobs. That was Janie Sakata. She's an actress in Sag Aftra, an Elliot Kaylyn, a former head writer

on the Daily Show and a member of the writer's guild. Their concerns about artificial intelligence

are shared across their unions, and yet as actors and writers fight to limit the use of AI,

the studios are hiring for a growing number of AI-related jobs. For an update on where things stand,

I spoke to Lucas Shaw, who covers media and entertainment for Bloomberg.

The writers and studios have sort of returned to the negotiating table. The writers went on strike

first and had not really spoken with the studios since then, but the fact that they're meeting

...