A group of Hollywood filmmakers, executives and actors has spent the last three years secretly meeting with Silicon Valley executives to try to address a simmering issue in the industry: how to define where AI is useful in the context of a human-controlled creative process.
The meetings were first convened in November 2023 by LucasFilm pioneer Kathleen Kennedy and American Film Institute dean Susan Ruskin. After a meeting last weekend of about 120 participants, the coalition landed on a framework that outlines how AI is already present in the film industry and defines ways humans can maintain control of other use cases — and potentially use AI to produce copyrightable work.
The group’s framework was first published in the Ankler. Page Six Hollywood reported that attendees included actor and InterPositive co-founder Ben Affleck; A24 partner Scott Belsky; CAA agent Greg Siegel, Paramount+ Originals executive Chris Parnell; “Stutz” producer Diane Becker; 30 Ninjas CEO Jed Weintrob; and director Jon Avnet.
The convening of Hollywood leaders to reshape the conversation around AI comes as the industry grapples with how the transformational technology can be additive to the filmmaking process while recognizing the fear that generative AI has struck into the creative community over everything from how models are trained to the rise of AI-generated deepfakes. The initiative indicates that industry execs and creative professionals are more eager to publicly discuss AI’s place within Hollywood, even if attendees are selectively going public about it.
