Google Tells Hollywood: Stop Being Afraid of Technology

Google's head of entertainment content and platforms, Jonathan Zepp, wants Hollywood to stop being so afraid of technology.

Zepp made the case at Google's Los Angeles offices in conversation with Peter Micelli, chief executive of Range Media Partners. The two executives met to discuss the entertainment industry's uneasy relationship with new technology — a relationship strained in recent years by labor disputes, streaming disruption and, most recently, artificial intelligence.

The discussion, captured in a photograph showing Zepp and Micelli together at Google's LA offices, reflects a broader push by the tech giant to position itself as a partner rather than a threat to the creative industries.

Hollywood's wariness is not unfounded. The 2023 strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA placed AI at the center of negotiations, with writers and actors winning contractual protections over how studios may use their work and likenesses.

Google, for its part, argues that technological change has historically expanded rather than diminished creative opportunity — and that the industry's instinct to resist new tools has often proven costly in hindsight.

Whether Hollywood's creative community accepts that argument remains an open question, and one that will shape the next phase of negotiation between Silicon Valley and the studios.