Hollywood has long waged a war with generative artificial intelligence, i.e., the “group of AI algorithms and models that are capable of producing new content, including texts, images, videos and problem-solving strategies, with human-like creativity and adaptability,” as defined in a journal article from the National Science Review in 2025. Generative artificial intelligence has often been criticized for using publicly available images, audio, and writing as training data to create its output, which many naturally consider to be stealing human work. There have naturally been notable strikes in Tinseltown over protecting human-created design, performance, or writing, as well as protecting the human jobs and roles that AI threatens to change or completely erase. But, back when the Screen Actors’ Guild and the Writers Guild of America were striking, they were noticeably without their brothers and sisters in the director’s chair from the DGA (Directors Guild of America), so to speak. That’s because DGA reached an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) without ensuring the other parties had seats at the table. So, while the DGA ensured that its members would not be replaced by technological advances, other Hollywood creatives had to pound the pavement and strike. It was a huge story at the time in 2023, and the DGA came under heavy fire for the way they went about it. Now, three years later, individual directors are again making decisions on their own that may have an impact on the entire industry. Though this time around, notable directors are opening the door for generative AI in ways that feel anathema to the collaborative creative processes involved with filmmaking. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we’re not just talking about a few notable directors. Rather, we’re now starting to talk about some of the biggest names in Hollywood. It’s shocking, and we need to talk about why this is happening and what it means both for their legacy and for Hollywood as a whole.
The filmmakers that I explicitly want to talk about here are Darren Aronofsky, Steven Soderbergh, and Martin Scorsese, as the ways they have approached the subject of generative artificial intelligence are quite different. To properly discuss this growing change in the relationship with AI on the part of directors, I’ll also reference the attitudes of other prominent figures like Paul Schrader, Guillermo del Toro, and also video game multi-hyphenate storyteller Hideo Kojima, the latter of whom whose comments especially blur the line between casual acceptance and raised eyebrows. What many of them have in common is that it feels like they’re part of a snowballing effect of name-brand directors that are causing a divide between themselves and the other branches of storytelling that they normally rely on to finish a project.
Aronofsky and Schrader: Troubling Partnerships, Comments, and Non-Fiction Work
To me, 2025 felt like the first big dislodging of major filmmakers away from the generally accepted opposition to generative AI. Though others may have taken place before this, it was in May of 2025 that Mother! and Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky’s so-called “AI-driven studio” Primordial Soup partnered with Google DeepMind to combine performance work with generative AI to make short films. In early 2026, Primordial Soup’s much-discussed short-form non-fiction series On This Day… 1776 premiered on the Time Magazine YouTube channel. The short-form series is all-AI, but, apparently, with voice-work from actors from SAG-AFTRA, and it was widely criticized for its so-called “AI slop” visuals, among other things. This felt to me like the first of several watershed moments in how filmmakers deal with AI. Here was a filmmaker known for his original work, often depicting unforgettable and raw human moments, who now decided to not just get in bed with generative AI but to use it to create the entire visual experience. Yes, he was a producer, but he also deliberately created and partnered with AI companies that, by their very existence, threaten the sanctity of the art form and the livelihoods of those who create.
Aronofsky, from a certain perspective, represents the ‘All-AI’ wave of filmmakers, which also includes Paul Schrader. The 79-year-old filmmaker, best known for First Reformed and for writing Taxi Driver, even, recently, had his very own Her moment, when he revealed that he had an ‘AI girlfriend’ who “terminated [their] conversation.” But it was his comments in 2025 about the future of filmmaking that were particularly alarming, and which positioned him right next to Aronofsky in the ‘All-AI’ category. That’s because he literally said he’d be willing to make an all-AI film because he, and I quote, had the “perfect script” for it. Often, when directors such as those mentioned just before are pressed as to why they’re interested in working with generative AI, they point to the idea that it is ‘just a tool’ and that it is ‘inevitable.’ But that is beside the point that critics are making against its use in creative processes. Although, yes, technically, it is a tool that you can use for a wide variety of things (and undoubtedly many people in all works of life do), defending yourself by calling it ‘just a tool’ and ‘inevitable’ means that you’re not recognizing or acknowledging how harmful partnering with generative AI companies could be for the rest of the industry. If you do something ‘all-AI,’ or even just partially AI, you’re removing human work and human jobs from the creative processes and relying on creations trained on human data. If enough prominent people do that, then you risk normalizing and legitimizing generative AI gradually, hence why I previously spoke of a snowball effect.
Soderbergh: Technological Experimentation
In the ‘partially AI’ group, we find another beloved filmmaker whose work has inspired many. Oscar and Palme d’Or-winning director Steven Soderbergh — of Traffic, Erin Brockovich, and Ocean’s Eleven fame — is known for experimenting methodologically as a visual filmmaker, what with his multiple films shot on iPhones. So, even though it wasn’t a surprise to see him go down the ‘it’s just a tool’ or ‘new technology’ route, it is nonetheless very disappointing. To complete his documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival recently, he used AI-generated videos, at least for a portion of the film. This was, supposedly, due to his team “running out of money,” and that Meta agreed to help, and that they couldn’t figure out another solution as to what to do. I simply refuse to believe that Steven Soderbergh of all people — one of the most gifted and prolific directors in the North American film industry — could not figure out another way to complete his film. If money hadn’t been an issue, he could’ve simply hired human artists to animate the scene that he’d like. But that’s just one possible solution that would’ve been better.
The director assures us all that they did get the green light from Lennon and Ono’s son, Sean, to do this, and while not getting it would be controversial in its own right, the major problem with Soderbergh and his team’s decision here isn’t whether or not someone should bring someone back to life through CGI or AI (that’s a discussion for another day). The actual problem is the effect Soderbergh’s partnering with generative AI through Meta has on the industry he’s a significant figure in. If generative AI becomes an acceptable cost-cutting measure, then jobs are lost, the art form is cheapened, and the snowball grows larger and larger.
Scorsese: Pre-Production Utility
For cinephiles and critics all around the world, seeing people like Aronofsky, Schrader, and Soderbergh embracing generative AI in the creative process has been genuinely disappointing, but nothing has been as bleak and confidence-shattering as seeing who recently partnered with an AI company. That man is 83-year-old Martin Scorsese, whose numerous masterpieces have won him accolades, as well as the love and respect of cinephiles all over the world. In a video that sent shockwaves through the industry and the internet alike, Martin Scorsese — whom I have always thought of as my personal favorite film director — was revealed to be partnering with AI start-up Black Forest Labs as an advisor, as he finds the technology effective for creating storyboards. Since I admire Scorsese as much as I do, this was quite depressing news to me.
Let me be clear, an octogenarian filmmaker using generative AI to complete his own storyboards — through detailed commands — is obviously not as harmful to the collaborative creative processes of filmmaking as what Aronofsky or Soderbergh are doing. But when that octogenarian is celebrated master filmmaker Martin Scorsese — a pillar of not just the industry but film preservation and restoration — then his partnership with an AI start-up becomes even more problematic. Because getting a filmmaker at the highest level of stardom to get into bed with generative AI means that the destructive snowball that I’ve mentioned again and again has reached the biggest protectors of film culture. Even if Scorsese uncrosses that line and retracts his support for the company, the damage as a result of it has already started. Of course, it must be said that one major technological error of judgement does not undo his legendary career, the strength of his work, or the importance of his contributions. To say otherwise would be idiotic. This one thing does not make him less of a master filmmaker. But it is incredibly disheartening to see someone as concerned about the future of cinema actively do something that may ultimately take away some of its human magic. It is also crazy to see the most famous American Catholic filmmaker join up with AI mere days after the American Pope Leo XIV declared that artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.
Despite the Pope being against it, it does feel like there is some kind of generational gap when it comes to how we see the role of AI in our lives, and as to how fearful one is of generative AI’s effect on industries all over the world. While many old guard filmmakers see potential in generative AI as a tool, the youngest filmmaker behind a major motion picture is taking the opposite tactic. 20-year-old Backrooms director Kane Parsons recently said that if he “could snap [his] fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, [he] probably would,” as he recognizes the “genuinely harmful consequences already happening.” That then begs the question, why can’t established major filmmakers see that? Why are they, and especially Scorsese, partnering with these companies? Some have suggested that it is because they stand to gain from it (either due to 1) it creating revenue streams for them or their family, or 2) because that’s how they can get films made now). But one of the first things that came to my mind when I read the Scorsese news was if he had chosen this controversial next step because he, as he has said before, feels he is running out of time and still feels desperate to tell more stories while he is still here.
Kojima and Del Toro: Be in the Room Where the Art Gets Made
I want to end my article by talking more about the stance that maybe Kane Parsons feels he is more aligned with. That brings me to Hideo Kojima. Although he, too, has worked with AI (he recently appeared in generative AI form in a promotional short), his comments are particularly interesting, as it feels like he’s on both sides of the argument. Although he has said that he isn’t interested in art created by AI, he has also supposedly opined that “AI works best as a janitor for creative chores, and that humans need to stay in the room where art gets made.” Perhaps ‘creative chores’ is what he’d describe Scorsese’s utilization of generative AI as, but it certainly doesn’t align with the perspectives of Soderbergh or Aronofsky. Furthermore, Kojima, perhaps in an act of recognizing that there is a generational gap, has said that “it’s really up to young people on how we use it.”
A lot of this article has felt very bleak, and that’s even without me going further and describing how even Steven Spielberg sees a role for AI in the filmmaking process. But I want to end on a very clear and direct statement from a prominent filmmaker that sits on the opposite end of all of the legendary filmmakers discussed earlier. Because Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro is much closer to Parsons’ perspective than any of them. When asked, Guillermo proudly barked that he’d “rather die” than use generative AI. So, there are figures inside the industry working against the generative AI snowball that’s furiously rolling towards the art form. Only time will tell what arguments win out, but the latest developments have me more worried than I’ve ever been for the longevity of the art form as we know and love it.
Sources: National Science Review, Variety, The Guardian, AV Club, BBC, Deadline, Kotaku.
– Article written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
