How can you be mad at Martin Scorsese?
The 83-year-old filmmaker behind classics like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed and Killers of the Flower Moon, is cinematic royalty. Beyond his filmmography, Scorsese is an insightfulchampion of cinema and a proponent of communicating through art.
Plus, his voice cameo in this year’s The Mandalorian And Grogu was one of the best things about the new Star Wars film, and he’s even game to be on Charli XCX’s new album cover.
However, in what feels to many as one of those “This is why we can’t have nice things” moments, Scorsese has spoken about using AI for filmmaking and has publicly endorsed tech company Black Forest Labs.
The Oscar-winner was announced as an “advisor” for the German-based company – specifically regarding the use of its FLUX image generation program. Black Forest Labs, which describes itself as “the frontier AI research lab for visual intelligence”, posted a video of the collaboration alongside a statement from the director.
“For 70 years, I’ve been creating my own storyboards,” begins Scorsese. “There’s always been this problem of how do you communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew. There are some things you have to see and feel. I’m interested in the intersection of technology and storytelling, and seeing how that can push the bounds of creativity to create deeper and richer experiences for audiences.”
He added: “Now, with this tool, I can share what I’m visualising more clearly and efficiently to my creative team – the production designer, art designer, and cinematographer – for them to build on to enrich cinematic intelligence. I recently tested this out on a scene and the ability to visualise and immediately share the storyboard was creatively freeing. During the pre-production process, time costs money, and this allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft.”
Check out the video below:
Virulent backlash
This endorsement can’t be too much of a surprise, given that Scorsese he has embraced new technologies before, specifically 3D for Hugo and de-aging tools for The Irishman.
During a press conference at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival, Scorsese even reminded attendees how relatively young cinema is as a medium.
When asked if cinema could be dying, he replied: “Cinema isn’t dying – it’s just transforming. It was never was meant to be just one thing. We were used to it being one thing. Growing up, if you wanted to see a movie you went to a theatre. It was always a communal experience. But the technology’s changed so rapidly and exhaustedly, that in a sense the only thing you can really hold onto is the individual voice. The individual voice, I must say, can express itself on TikTok or can express itself on a four-hour film or a two-hour miniseries.”
He added at the time: “I don’t think we should let the technology scare us.”
However, AI is an extremely divisive issue in the arts, chiefly because it poses an existential threat to creatives – especially if it is used to replace human beings in the creative process.
Hollywood has largely rejected “AI slop”, and the backlash to one of cinema’s titans embracing the rise of artificial intelligence through the Black Forest Labs has been swift.
Some have dug up Scorsese’s previous comments about Marvel films not being cinema and highlighted the hypocrisy at the heart of such a statement in light of his AI endorsement. Others have accused him of throwing artists “under the bus”, calling his team-up a “betrayal” and something which “cuts against so many things Scorsese has stood for his entire career”.
Karla Ortiz, who worked in the art department on several Marvel films including Avengers: Endgame, Black Panther and Doctor Strange, wrote: “He throws every single storyboard artist he’s ever worked with under the bus, as he demolishes their livelihoods with models that are likely trained on those storyboard artist’s same works. To use his legacy and power for this is just so disgusting.”
“My guess: at 83, they gave his family a gang of money (they throw tens of millions left&right) he wanted the income stream4them& feels like “AI” will fall on its face anyway, so he doesnt give a fuck…” speculated filmmaker Boots Riley, adding: “If that’s not the case, extrafuck him.”
Check out some of the reactions below:
There were some who defended Marty, stating that “if AI can help someone like Scorsese show his cinematographer or production team what he’s imagining more quickly, I don’t really see the issue.”
Another wrote: “He is not using AI to replace cinema. He is not asking you to use it. He is using it to visualize ideas faster in pre-production, which is exactly where this kind of tool makes sense. That is not the death of art.”
Despite some back-up from fans, Scorsese’s AI seal of approval has left a bitter taste.
In good company?
With this move, Scorsese joins the ranks of other figures in the film industry who are also endorsing the use of AI.
Guillermo Del Toro is emphatically not one of them.
Avatar creator James Cameron joined the board of Stability AI in 2024 and has spoken out about how the technology could be used to streamline the way films are made.
“We’ve got to figure out how to cut the cost of that in half,” Cameron said on the Boz to the Future podcast last year. “Now, that’s not about laying off half the staff and at the effects company. That’s about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster, and artists get to move on and do other cool things and then other cool things.”
Darren Aronofsky’s studio has used AI to recreate the American Revolution in a series of short films, while Steven Soderbergh has used it to create visual scenes in his recent documentary about John Lennon, John Lennon: The Last Interview.
Even Steven Spielberg recently said AI could help “save us a lot of legwork” by undertaking tasks like location scouting. However, he added that AI should just be “a tool in a large tool chest” and that it shouldn’t have the “final word on anything creative”.
Major film festivals are also getting in on it. Recently, Cannes Film Festival’s marketplace debuted a 95-minute AI-generated action film titled Hell Grind, while the Tribeca Film Festival will premiere the 75-minute AI-generated docudrama Dreams Of Violets next week (10 June). The latter focuses on Iranian civilian resistance, and its presence at the festival was defended by Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal, who told Variety: “The director is Iranian – his family, relatives and friends are there and it’s the only way in a two-month period he could tell his story, his way.”
Faced with online backlash, she added: “If somebody wrote a song about it, you wouldn’t say anything, if somebody wrote a poem about it, you wouldn’t say anything, if somebody wanted to dance about it, you wouldn’t say anything. “So [director Ash Koosha] did it his way, so I think you have to look at it in that context.”
The implications of Scorsese’s endorsement
Is Scorsese’s advocacy of AI a cash-grab? A depressing symptom of the growing inescapability of artificial intelligence in movies? Or is it simply something to brush aside as the old guard trying to get with the times?
As appeasing as it would be to not see Scorsese’s endorsement as another alarming indicator regarding the possible future of the film industry – starting with the potential threat AI represents for pre-production talents – creatives still feel threatened. Both old and young.
The latter category is represented by 20-year-old sensation Kane Parsons, the YouTuber-turned-filmmaker whose film Backrooms is one of 2026’s runaway hits.
In a recent interview with outlet The Australian, Parsons made his feelings crystal clear about the “cultural and economic rot” that is AI.
“I think I’m in the same boat as most well-adjusted people,” he said. “If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.”
He continued: “What interests me more is interrogating it artistically. We already live in a world where you walk outside and there are billboards and signs that are obvious AI slop. That’s become part of our visual reality. To me, generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot.”
Parsons concluded: “I’m interested in using that iconography in art – not using AI to make the art itself, but examining what it represents. I definitely want to explore it further in future projects.”
It’s too soon to say whether Marty is examining or about to use…
None of the official statements suggest that the filmmaker will be employing AI-generated images or casting Tilly Norwood in a future film any time soon, and very little information is available regarding the extent of the Scorsese-Black Forest Labs partnership.
His next project, What Happens At Night, the upcoming adaptation of Patrick Marber’s 2020 novel starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Mads Mikkelsen, should hopefully be AI-free.
In the meantime, filmmakers would do well to read the room, and clearly address the extent of their collaborations to hopefully quash fears. While they’re at it, they may wish to echo the sentiments of Hollywood’s actors’ union SAG-AFTRA, which stated earlier this year: “SAG-AFTRA believes creativity is, and should remain, human-centered.”