Martin Scorsese has found himself in hot water with his Hollywood colleagues after endorsing the use of artificial intelligence in filmmaking.
The Oscar-winning director, 83, sparked a firestorm in the filmmaking world last week for appearing in an ad for the AI startup Black Forest Labs—where he is an adviser.
In the promotional video, Scorsese uses the company’s text-to-image AI engine to create a storyboard featuring a medieval street and then declares that the technology “conveys a cinematic—a cinematic intelligence.”
In a fiery statement released on Tuesday, a labor union representing art directors, scenic artists, and other workers blasted Scorsese’s embrace of AI.
“Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese is turning his back on the human artists who throughout his career have helped him create his most memorable works,” the Art Directors Guild wrote.
Seizing on Scorsese’s own words, the guild noted, “Generative AI is only capable of producing this type of ‘cinematic intelligence’ by ingesting large swaths of copyrighted work, likely scraped from the internet without consent, credit, compensation, or transparency.”
The labor group continued, “To think their professional contributions can be mimicked or outshone by generative AI, which is built on work likely stolen from them and many other artists from around the world, is a betrayal of the collaborative nature of cinema.”
“Mr. Scorsese’s promotion of a generative AI product circumvents the input of Art Directors Guild Local 800 art directors, graphic artists, illustrators, production designers, scenic artists, set designers, and other talented Union professionals.”
Scorsese, who has directed films such as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Killers of the Flower Moon, is not only promoting the company but also revealed that he uses artificial intelligence in his own filmmaking process.
“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 in a statement posted to the Black Forest Labs website. “I recently tested this out on a scene and the ability to visualize and immediately share the storyboard was creatively freeing.”
It’s unclear whether the technology played any role in pre-production on Scorsese’s next film, What Happens at Night, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.
