AI isn’t new to Hollywood — however this was the yr when it actually made its presence felt. For years now, the leisure trade has used completely different sorts of generative AI merchandise for a wide range of post-production processes starting from de-aging actors to eradicating inexperienced display backgrounds. In lots of situations, the know-how has been a useful gizmo for human artists tasked with tedious and painstaking labor which may have in any other case taken them inordinate quantities of time to finish. However in 2025, Hollywood actually started warming to the thought of deploying the form of gen AI that’s actually solely good for conjuring up text-to-video slop that doesn’t have all that many sensible makes use of in conventional manufacturing workflows. Regardless of all the cash and energy being put into it, there’s but to be a gen-AI undertaking that has proven why it’s price all the hype.
This confluence of Hollywood and AI didn’t begin out so rosy. Studios had been in a main place to take the businesses behind this know-how to court docket as a result of their video technology fashions had clearly been educated on copyrighted mental property. A lot of main manufacturing firms together with Disney, Common, and Warner Bros. Discovery did file lawsuits towards AI companies and their boosters for that very motive. However reasonably than pummeling AI purveyors into the bottom, a few of Hollywood’s largest energy gamers selected as a substitute to get into mattress with them. Now we have solely simply begun to see what can come from this new period of gen-AI partnerships, however all indicators level to issues getting a lot sloppier within the very close to future.
Although lots of this yr’s gen-AI headlines had been dominated by bigger outfits like Google and OpenAI, we additionally noticed plenty of smaller gamers vying for a seat on the leisure desk. There was Asteria, Natasha Lyonne’s startup targeted on creating movie tasks with “ethically” engineered video technology fashions, and startups like Showrunner, an Amazon-backed platform designed to let subscribers create animated “reveals” (a really beneficiant time period) from just some descriptive sentences plugged into Discord. These comparatively new firms had been all determined to legitimize the concept their taste of gen AI may very well be used to supercharge movie / TV growth whereas bringing down total manufacturing prices.
Asteria didn’t have something greater than hype to share with the general public after saying its first movie, and it was arduous to consider that ordinary individuals can be desirous about paying for Showrunner’s shoddily cobbled-together knockoffs of reveals made by precise animators. Within the latter case, it felt very very like Showrunner’s actual aim was to safe juicy partnerships with established studios like Disney that might result in their tech being baked into platforms the place customers might immediate up bespoke content material that includes recognizable characters from large franchises.
That concept appeared pretty ridiculous when Showrunner first hit the scene as a result of its fashions churn out the trendy equal of clunky JibJab cartoons. However in due time, Disney made it clear that — crappy as text-to-video turbines are usually for something past fast memes — it was desirous about experimenting with that form of content material. In December, Disney entered right into a three-year, billion-dollar licensing cope with OpenAI that might let Sora customers make AI movies with 200 completely different characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and extra.
Netflix turned one of many first large studios to proudly announce that it was going all-in on gen AI. After utilizing the know-how to supply particular results for one in every of its authentic sequence, the streamer printed an inventory of normal pointers it needed its companions to observe in the event that they deliberate to leap on the slop bandwagon as nicely. Although Netflix wasn’t mandating that filmmakers use gen AI, it made clear that saving cash on VFX work was one of many essential causes it was popping out in help of the development. And it wasn’t lengthy earlier than Amazon adopted swimsuit by releasing a number of Japanese anime sequence that had been terribly localized into different languages as a result of the dubbing course of didn’t contain any human translators or voice actors.
Amazon’s gen-AI dubs turned a shining instance of how poorly this know-how can carry out. Additionally they highlighted how some studios aren’t placing all that a lot effort into ensuring that their gen AI-derived tasks are polished sufficient to be launched to the general public. That was additionally true of Amazon’s machine-generated TV recaps, which incessantly obtained particulars about completely different reveals very improper. Each of those fiascos made it appear as if Amazon by some means thought that folks wouldn’t discover or care about AI’s lack of ability to constantly generate high-quality outputs. The studio rapidly pulled its AI-dubbed sequence and the recap characteristic down, but it surely didn’t say that it wouldn’t strive this type of nonsense once more.
All of this and different dumb stunts like AI “actress” Tilly Norwood made it really feel like sure segments of the leisure trade had been turning into extra snug attempting to foist gen-AI “leisure” on individuals despite the fact that it left many individuals deeply unimpressed and delay. None of those tasks demonstrated to the general public why anybody apart from money-pinching execs (and individuals who worship them for some motive) can be excited by a future formed by this know-how.
Apart from a couple of unimpressive photographs, we nonetheless haven’t seen what all would possibly come from a few of these collaborations, like Disney cozying as much as OpenAI. However subsequent yr AI’s presence in Hollywood will likely be much more pronounced. Disney plans to dedicate a complete part of its streaming service to user-generated content material sourced from Sora, and it’ll encourage Disney staff to make use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT merchandise. However the deal’s actual significance on this present second is the message it sends to different studios about how they need to transfer as Hollywood enters its slop period.
No matter whether or not Disney thinks this may work out nicely, the studio has signaled that it doesn’t wish to be left behind if AI adoption retains accelerating. That tells different manufacturing homes that they need to observe swimsuit, and if that turns into the case, there’s no telling how rather more of these items we’re all going to be pressured to endure.
