AEW’s Tony Khan appeared on CNBC today to promote the Forbidden Door pay-per-view that airs this Sunday night on Bleacher Report/PPV.
Khan was asked about the UFC/Endeavor merger with WWE and how it might impact All Elite Wrestling. Khan said, “In terms of business, I think both companies are focused on pro wrestling, in terms of AEW and WWE. Yes, working with outside sports is great…For me at AEW, definitely, our primary focus is the fans and for us that’s the wrestling fans and whenever you can bring people from outside the world of pro wrestling — celebrities or athletes or both, it can be very exciting and there’s a lot of history in the business of great cross promotions involving celebrities and wrestling and involving athletes from outside wrestling coming into pro wrestling. But alternatively, there have been some not great promotions that other people outside of AEW, at times have done and I think for AEW, we’ve been on a really hot run of great shows.”
On how analytics might play into some of his decision-making: “I do think that for our metrics and analytics that we do really get some interpretation from data as far as who is helping us sell the most tickets, who is driving the most merchandise sales and pay-per-view sales.”
Khan also said that the noise in the arena can be a great business indicator.
On if he would ever entertain the idea of using AI to generate promos or to book shows, he said that it’s not an insane idea but right now, ChatGPT is limited to events that happened post-2021.
He said, “It’s not insane. I’ve definitely messed around with ChatGPT and AI a decent amount. One thing about them is they take criticism and feedback very well. Because when I first messed around with ChatGPT and asked it about okay give me your best version of an AEW Wednesday Night Dynamite. First of all, it has limited knowledge of world events since 2021. So, it’s presentation of AEW for those people that have messed around with it, then you found that it was really looking at AEW from a couple of years ago…so, one thing was giving it an updated roster. Another thing I thought was interesting was asking to write a 10 segment wrestling show with 9 breaks that is 2 hours long. It’s AEW Dynamite, it knew what that was and it tied to format it out. It did the same thing that everybody does when they first get into wrestling and really all fans would do…is try to put too much in versus what you can actually get done in a 2-hour show. I saw that ChatGPT like a human being was trying to stuff too much into the show. So long story short, I re-trained it, it took the criticism very well, and then came back with alternative ideas. It had some solid thoughts honestly. I could see the merits of people utilizing it to check their work or come up with ideas. But it definitely has a limited knowledge of world events since 2021 so it’s way behind.”
Tony Khan says he has tried ChatGPT but it tried to cram too much into an AEW show. pic.twitter.com/u69OXtUlJj
— Wrestling News (@WrestlingNewsCo) June 23, 2023
