Ok, sure, maybe there's demand there. But how would the logistics work out so that it managed to become a problem?
Are people
a) Waiting 5 seconds/frame * 60 fps = 5 minutes / second for a video to generate on their personal computer, and doing this constantly enough that it manages to become a problem?
b) Buying computers that can do it real-time, but therefore output vastly more heat, requiring thermal management system akin to a car driving at highway speed?
c) Renting these computers at considerable cost to make these videos?
As long as enough people watch each video (or one person watches it enough times), the energy usage washes out to become negligible compared to the amount of human time invested. I just can't see a world where enough people are managing to consume a kw minute/second producing videos for themselves to watch only once or twice that it becomes an issue.
Personally I'm optimistic that energy/compute is going to continue going down substantially (in which case even real-time video generation might not be an issue). If it doesn't and we don't become substantially better at efficiently synthesizing video, I can't see personalized single use video generation being a thing.
> a) Waiting 5 seconds/frame * 60 fps = 5 minutes / second for a video to generate on their personal computer, and doing this constantly enough that it manages to become a problem?
There will be much more compute resources thrown at it to make it render in real time. We're not there yet, but I can see a path to that happening in the next few years.
> b) Buying computers that can do it real-time, but therefore output vastly more heat, requiring thermal management system akin to a car driving at highway speed?
Why not? We already have billions of cars driving around outputting heat. Its an incredible expenditure of energy, sure, but perhaps the value of generated content entertainment will match the value of car transportation.
> c) Renting these computers at considerable cost to make these videos?
I imagine longer term, the opex (i.e energy costs) will dominate the capex (GPU HW). The price of going into a generated world could be similar to going for a drive.
> As long as enough people watch each video (or one person watches it enough times), the energy usage washes out to become negligible compared to the amount of human time invested. I just can't see a world where enough people are managing to consume a kw minute/second producing videos for themselves to watch only once or twice that it becomes an issue.
This is where I strongly disagree. The democratization of skills and tools in creating content will break the one to many media model. You saw this in a large way in what the internet did to content distribution, in how the number of independent people creating content skyrocketed. These models will do the same for content creation. I predict most people will consume content personally generated for themselves or in small groups.
Here's an example: a group of friends puts on their VR headsets for their weekly DnD session. The DM begins describing the scene, which autogenerates around them. Each character can then respond with their own actions / path, and the scenes react dynamically. The hour session costs them $10 in compute/energy.
I'm mostly spitballing. I would imagine that we still have a couple of orders of magnitude reduction in energy costs that can be squeezed out of these models with improvements in specialized HW. But it will be matched against the insatiable demand of consumers for richer interactivity in content.
Are people
a) Waiting 5 seconds/frame * 60 fps = 5 minutes / second for a video to generate on their personal computer, and doing this constantly enough that it manages to become a problem?
b) Buying computers that can do it real-time, but therefore output vastly more heat, requiring thermal management system akin to a car driving at highway speed?
c) Renting these computers at considerable cost to make these videos?
As long as enough people watch each video (or one person watches it enough times), the energy usage washes out to become negligible compared to the amount of human time invested. I just can't see a world where enough people are managing to consume a kw minute/second producing videos for themselves to watch only once or twice that it becomes an issue.
Personally I'm optimistic that energy/compute is going to continue going down substantially (in which case even real-time video generation might not be an issue). If it doesn't and we don't become substantially better at efficiently synthesizing video, I can't see personalized single use video generation being a thing.