Hollywood-Silicon Valley Coalition Unveils AI Filmmaking Framework
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- Kathleen Kennedy and Susan Ruskin convened the coalition in November 2023, and the group has spent three years meeting secretly with Silicon Valley executives before landing on its framework at a recent gathering of about 120 participants.
- The "Human Generative Workflows" document distinguishes between AI-assisted workflows it deems copyrightable — including upscaling, sharpening, and markerless mocap — and AI-generated assets such as synthetic voices and likenesses that substitute for human performance, which the group says are not copyrightable.
- Attendees named in coverage of the meeting included Ben Affleck, A24 partner Scott Belsky, CAA agent Greg Siegel, Paramount+ Originals executive Chris Parnell, producer Diane Becker, 30 Ninjas CEO Jed Weintrob, and director Jon Avnet.
- The coalition acknowledged the framework is "not intended to address" how AI models are trained or the technology's potential impact on industry jobs, framing those issues as separate conversations.
- The group's first public statement says the document is meant to "stimulate industry discussion and provide a common vocabulary for thinking about authorship in an era of generative AI" and to provoke parallel conversations across music, sound, and writing.
- The framework argues that the acronym "AI" is "used in the same breath" for vastly different tools — from a color grading assist in DaVinci Resolve to a prompted synthetic performance replacing an actor — and urges a classification system for the variations.
Why it matters: For the first time, a 120-person cross-industry coalition has drawn a copyright line: AI tools that assist human creative vision are protectable, while AI-generated substitutes for human likenesses and voices are not — a distinction that will shape how studios, agents, and talent negotiate likeness rights and AI use in upcoming contracts.
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