Martin Scorsese says AI helps him communicate with team better
Iconic director Martin Scorsese has endorsed German AI startup Black Forest Labs, signaling Hollywood’s softening stance on the fast-emerging technology.
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Martin Scorsese has become an advisor to German AI image generation startup Black Forest Labs, using its tools for storyboarding and visualizing films during preproduction.
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The partnership signals a growing acceptance of AI in Hollywood, despite ongoing debates and concerns among actors and filmmakers about AI’s impact on creative work.
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Black Forest Labs, valued at $3.25 billion, joins other firms in supplying AI tools to the film industry as Hollywood gradually explores ways to integrate AI into storytelling and production.
Scorsese has joined Black Forest Labs, which specializes in AI image generation, as an advisor, and discussed in a promotional video for the firm, made in his New York office, how he used its tools during preproduction for a new film.
However, both in a statement and a video posted on YouTube, one of the world’s most famous living directors made it clear that he only uses the technology for storyboarding, which is a process of visually mapping out the films before the cameras start rolling.
Scorsese, 83, said he had been creating his own storyboards for 70 years but “[t]here’s always been this problem of how do you communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew” and that there are some things “you have to see and feel.”
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“Now with this tool, I can share what I'm visualizing more clearly and efficiently to my creative team – the production designer, art designer, and cinematographer – for them to build on to enrich cinematic intelligence," he said.
Scorcese, a 16-time Oscar nominee who won best director for The Departed in 2007, had signed as partner and adviser last year, according to Black Forest Labs, as reported by The New York Times.
Black Forest Labs was founded in 2024 by Roman Rombach, who also serves as its chief executive, and others behind Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image tool developed by London-based Stability AI, which counts another Oscar-winning director, James Cameron, as its board member.
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The company employs around 70 people is based in a German city of Freiburg, located in the foothills of the famous Black Forest – hence its name. According to Wired, Black Forest Labs recently declined to continue its partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI after a number of controversies related to its chatbot, Grok.
Black Forest Labs develops text-to-image tools called FLUX and counts Adobe, Mistral AI, and Nvidia among clients. The start-up was most recently valued at $3.25 billion and its investors include BroadLight Capital, co-founded by Scorsese’s talent manager, Rick Yorn, and Andreessen Horowitz.
Hollywood’s increasing embrace of AI
Scorsese’s partnership with an AI firm reflects Hollywood’s increasing embrace of AI, following a writers’ strike in 2023 sparked by concerns about the technology’s impact, even as many in the industry remain on the fence.
Actors like Scarlett Johansson and Morgan Freeman have pushed against the unauthorized cloning of their voice and likeness, while Wednesday star Jenna Ortega recently said that “a computer has no soul.”
Actor Seth Rogen also spoke out against the use of AI in Hollywood, while filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said he’d “rather die” than use AI.
However, others are more accepting, with actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Cane signing deals with ElevenLabs, a Polish-founded voice cloning company, and Russian Doll star Natasha Lyonne directing a science fiction movie that blends live-action cinematography with “ethical” generative AI.
Actor Demi Moore told reporters while serving as a juror at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year that fighting AI “is a battle that we will lose,” saying it was “a more valuable path” to find ways to work with it.”
And Tribeca Film Festival is set to premiere a fully AI-generated film called Dreams of Violets, about the Iranian civil resistance, on June 10th. It will mark the first time a full-length, live-action film generated by AI was accepted by a major film festival, according to Variety.
Tribeca co-founder and leading Hollywood producer Jane Rosenthal described the movie as “a powerful example of how emerging technologies like AI can be used not simply as tools of innovation, but as vehicles for deeply human storytelling.”
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