Machine learning in post-production editing, color grading, sound, dubbing and lip synchronization
Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: The one-person company, a firm in which artificial intelligence substitutes for the employees, managers and contractors that a conventional venture would hire, is presented in policy and practitioner commentary as the successor to the superstar firm, but its theoretical foundations have not been assembled.This narrative review synthesizes the economics of superstar firms, the transactioncost and knowledge-based theories of the firm, and the task-based automation literature to state the conditions under which the transition from the superstar firm to the super-individual is coherent and the conditions under which it fails.The synthesis shows that the superstar-firm literature explains why production concentrated, that the theory-of-the-firm literature explains which costs artificial intelligence lowers, and that the task-based literature explains why the founder, rather than the firm, becomes the unit of production.The one-person company hypothesis is coherent as an extension of these three bodies of work, but it is not yet supported by any verified case of a one-person unicorn, and its boundary conditions are founder skill, platform dependence and the irreplaceable residue of human judgment.The review concludes that the super-individual is a plausible limiting case of a real technological trend rather than an established fact, and that future work should test it against survival, scale and liability outcomes.
Author: Emanuel Maldonado
Language: English
Topic: Technology's Impact on Media
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7225381149