Art Directors Guild denounces Scorsese’s AI endorsement
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- Art Directors Guild (IATSE Local 800) issued a statement condemning Martin Scorsese’s endorsement of Black Forest Labs’ generative AI tool Flux, calling it a betrayal of cinema’s collaborative nature.
- Art Directors Guild said the AI tool circumvents the work of its members—art directors, graphic artists, illustrators, production designers, scenic artists, and set designers—who have traditionally visualized films for decades.
- Art Directors Guild claims the AI is trained on large amounts of copyrighted work likely scraped without consent, credit, compensation, or transparency, implying it steals from artists worldwide.
- Black Forest Labs announced Scorsese as an advisor to shape its “visual intelligence” and promote the Flux tool for storyboarding.
- Martin Scorsese said he has been creating his own storyboards for 70 years and that Flux lets him communicate his vision to cast and crew more clearly, efficiently, and at lower cost, without sacrificing quality.
- SAG‑AFTRA has endorsed the Trump administration’s AI policy framework, which urges Congress to legislate parental controls, IP protections, First Amendment rights, AI workforce development, and to remove legal barriers to AI innovation.
- Trump signed an executive order establishing a voluntary framework for AI companies to submit new models for a 30‑day government review before release.
Why it matters: The Guild’s condemnation highlights a clash between traditional art‑director labor and AI‑driven workflows, signaling that human designers risk losing jobs and compensation while AI firms stand to gain a market foothold in film pre‑production, potentially reshaping creative pipelines and compensation structures.
