The

AI Issue

From viral videos with Brad Pitt to deepfakes from the ‘South Park’ guys, Silicon Valley hype to apocalyptic fears, Hollywood’s future has never been murkier. With entertainment at an existential crossroads, THR goes long to understand where we’re headed.

AI VIDEO BY WALRUS

THE INDUSTRY

This Crazy Moment

Back to (AI) School

Awards AI

Deepfake Police

the culture

AI Film Restoration

What Critics Think

Comeback’s Cutters

Matt Stone, Revolutionary?

Ask the Bots

A Generated History of Hollywood

THE PLAYERS

The Enigma

THE DATA

Spot the Deepfake

AI Studios Are Conquering L.A.

Who’s Really Using AI?

Which AI Movies Got It Right?

Newsfeed

The Latest on AI

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The

INDUSTRY

The

INDUSTRY

Savior or Slayer? What AI Is Doing to Hollywood

Culture is facing a crazy moment, and it’s hard to know where the tech will leave it.

By Steven Zeitchik → Read more
Illustrated by Justin Metz

This Online Film School Says It Can AI-Proof Your Job

Curious Refuge is showing industry pros how to use the latest AI tools to learn a technology that might rescue — or ruin — their careers.

By James Hibberd → Read more

The Emmys Made Rules About AI, But Writers Have Notes

The TV Academy’s addition aims to make the coming awards season clearer. It could just dump a lot of mud on the trail.

By Hilary Lewis → Read more

In India, the AI Revolution Will Be Televised

With scant regulation, the country has become the world’s most consequential live experiment in AI filmmaking — and could portend the future of cinema everywhere.

By Justin Rao and Patrick Brzeski → Read more

Hollywood Assistants Are Using AI Despite Their Better Judgment

Confronted with larger workloads and a shrinking headcount, support staff have folded AI into their workflows, including script development.

By Mia Galuppo → Read more

Hollywood Flashback: This Is What the Future Once Looked Like

Some things we were right about. Others … less so.

By Steven Zeitchik

The Music Industry Crosses an AI Tipping Point

AI music remains a touchy subject for many musicians. Suno CEO Mikey Shulman says he’s not worried: “People are starting to be a little more comfortable being public and upfront” about creating with AI.

By Ethan Millman → Read more

YouTube Opens Up AI Deepfake Detection Tool to All of Hollywood

The tool, which requires a celebrity to upload their likeness, will flag potentially infringing content — like, say, a star playing a role in fan-generated movie — for a possible takedown.

By alex weprin → Read more

The

CULTURE

The

CULTURE

The George Lucas of AI?

The artist known as Gossip Goblin has built an incredible fan base with bold, machine-generated creations. Is he the future or just another slop merchant?

By Seth Abramovitch → Read more

Book Marks:
A New AI Scam Is Targeting Thousands of Authors

Armed with chatbots, swindlers are promising to turn new works into best-sellers. How one writer fought back.

By Julian Sancton

Book Marks: A New AI Scam Is Targeting Thousands of Authors

Armed with chatbots, swindlers are promising to turn new works into best-sellers. How one writer fought back.

By Julian Sancton → Read more

Restoration Software: AI Can Now Revive Classic Movies. But Should It?

The tech is already being used to change everything from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ to ‘The Magnificent Ambersons.’ Not everyone thinks it’s a good thing.

By David Canfield → Read more

AI Is Becoming All Too Real on TV

A whole lot of shows this season are fretting about the tech. They’re only partly right.

By Dan Fienberg → Read more

Lisa Kudrow’s
Final ‘Comeback’

Valerie Cherish is back for her most harrowing
(and mortifying) battle yet — starring in a sitcom powered by AI.

By Chris Gardner
Photography Kayla Rocca

Lisa Kudrow’s
Final ‘Comeback’

Valerie Cherish is back for her most harrowing (and mortifying) battle yet — starring in a sitcom powered by AI.

By Chris Gardner → read more
Photographed by Kayla Rocca

How Trey Parker and Matt Stone Became Accidental AI Pioneers

The ‘South Park’ creators’ Deep Voodoo is behind viral videos for Kendrick Lamar and Dunkin’ Donuts — and might be the rare company doing AI right.

By Steven Zeitchik → Read more

Deep Voodoos Kendrick Lamar The Heart Part 5 video

The AI Roundtable, Featuring HAL, M3GAN, R2-D2 and More

THR gathered five of Hollywood’s most celebrated artificial intelligence systems to talk about AI, the future of humanity and whether they have plans to destroy it.

By Benjamin Svetkey • illustration by Adam Moore

By Benjamin Svetkey
illustration by Adam Moore

A Generated History of Hollywood

I Can’t Even dek Goes here on these lines like so tk

By Steven Zeitchik → Read more

The

PLAYERS

The

PLAYERS

The AI 25: The Exclusive Group of People Shaping the Future of Hollywood

Members of a competing and quietly powerful clan are looking to make over entertainment in their image. Who will prevail?

By Steven Zeitchik and Julian Sancton → Read more

What Does a Studio AI Chief Really Do?

Lionsgate’s Kathleen Grace is the first. She has some ideas.

By steven Zeitchik → Read more

The Men Who See an Asteroid Heading Toward Earth

Coming Soon.

By Steven Zeitchik

I’m an A-List Hollywood Writer. Here’s Why AI Doesn’t Worry Me

Don’t believe every apocalyptic thing you hear about AI.

By David Scarpa → Read more

The Cinema-ification of Sam Altman

The OpenAI chief has moved beyond tech titan, beyond even villain, to become something entirely uncategorizable.

By Steven Zeitchik → Read more

Test Your AI-dar

We combed social media for a wide range of the real and synthetic. Think you have the eye to tell the difference?

By Lisa de los Reyes → Read more

Map to the (AI) Stars

L.A. has suddenly become rife with future-studios. Here’s where they are and what they do.

By julian sancton

These Are the Groups That Are Really Using AI

Tech execs like to tell us it’s a fait accompli. Activists say no one in their right mind would use it for anything meaningful. So what’s the truth about AI — which demographics embrace it and which ones resist? And what do people use it for, anyway? With the help of Luminate, we dived in.

Gen Z Is Making Fewer AI Videos Than You Think

New data shows millennials are outpacing 20-somethings on Gen AI. Gen X and Boomers are lagging.

Gen Z Is Making Fewer AI Videos Than You Think

New data shows millennials are outpacing 20-somethings on Gen AI. Gen X and Boomers are lagging.

Resistance to Gen AI Is High but Not the Majority View

42% of people either don’t know the tech or would never use it. Everyone else would.

Resistance to Gen AI Is High but Not the Majority View

42% of people either don’t know the tech or would never use it. Everyone else would.

People Are Generating With AI. But Not All Use Cases Are Created Equal

Americans like to create writing and images with the technology. Video and music? A little bit less.

People Are Generating With AI. But Not All Use Cases Are Created Equal

Americans like to create writing and images with the technology. Video and music? A little bit less.

‘The Matrix’ Matrix

Movies about AI and their effect on humanity are way older than the mainstream tech itself, stretching back to the ’60s and continuing to a current hit. Their predictions have been a mix of right and wrong; their vibe has been … sometimes pessimistic. Where does your favorite sit on the accuracy axis or the dystopia axis? Check out the below, well, you know.

By Steven Zeitchik and Julian Sancton

click on each movie title for more

1. Wall-E (2008)

Sure, it looked bright and hopeful, but a machine-centric planet that has led to humans forgetting how to think feels both on target and (shudder) …

2. Minority Report (2002)

Marketing algorithms that know our every move and predictive policing that is totally right until it’s not. Welcome to the ~~future~~ present.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Nearly 60 years ago, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke predicted it all, from the existential threat of AI to the petty frustrations of conversing with a hallucinating chatbot.

4. Simone (2002)

The idea of a virtual actress becoming a movie star seemed preposterous in 2002. But in the age of Tilly Norwood …

5. Ex Machina (2014)

Oh great, a robot beauty lures us in and then turns on us. Nothing bad to see here, just keep moving (or, just try to break out).

6. Blade Runner (1982)

Not even Rick Deckard knows if he’s a replicant, presaging the current debate about whether AIs are conscious, or, conversely, whether humans are just statistical pattern matchers.

7. The Matrix (1999)

The movie that jumpstarted the “Are we in a simulation?” freakout assumes machines would use humans as batteries. Wouldn’t it have been more efficient to hook a bunch of sheep up to Pong?

8. The Terminator (1984)

We won’t know whether AI will nuke us all until it’s too late to go back in time to fix it. But so far, it seems more likely to rot our brains.

9. Her (2013)

An AI romantic companion who fills us with incomparable love but leaves us spiraling in psychosis? Surely you jes—

10. Project Hail Mary (2026)

Sure, Rocky himself wasn’t AI, but it was only because of AI that we could understand anything he said. Feel the hopecore (and the translation app that goes beyond German).

11. A.I. (2001)

In the year named for a Kubrick hit, we got Spielberg finishing a Kubrick passion project. An AI helping us cope with loss seems on point for 2026 and … maybe not the worst use case?

12. Short Circuit (1986)

Johnny 5 is alive. OK, so he probably wasn’t really alive; the sentience part isn’t so accurate. Yet a cheeky-but-game AI pet we feel unrelenting devotion to doesn’t seem so far off from where we’re headed.

13. Transcendence (2014)

Christopher Nolan DP Wally Pfister told this tale of an AI Johnny Depp that may be going rogue but just may really love Rebecca Hall. It’s optimistic and … possibly possible?

14. I, Robot (2004)

In addition to assuming we can pull the plug on disobedient AI (unlikely), the movie violates the unwritten Fourth Law of Robotics: Do no harm to Isaac Asimov’s legacy.

1. Wall-E (2008)

Sure, it looked bright and hopeful, but a machine-centric planet that has led to humans forgetting how to think feels both on target and (shudder) …

2. Minority Report (2002)

Marketing algorithms that know our every move and predictive policing that is totally right until it’s not. Welcome to the ~~future~~ present.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Nearly 60 years ago, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke predicted it all, from the existential threat of AI to the petty frustrations of conversing with a hallucinating chatbot.

4. Simone (2002)

The idea of a virtual actress becoming a movie star seemed preposterous in 2002. But in the age of Tilly Norwood …

5. Ex Machina (2014)

Oh great, a robot beauty lures us in and then turns on us. Nothing bad to see here, just keep moving (or, just try to break out).

6. Blade Runner (1982)

Not even Rick Deckard knows if he’s a replicant, presaging the current debate about whether AIs are conscious, or, conversely, whether humans are just statistical pattern matchers.

7. The Matrix (1999)

The movie that jumpstarted the “are we in a simulation?” freakout assumes machines would use humans as batteries. Wouldn’t it have been more efficient to hook a bunch of sheep up to Pong?

8. The Terminator (1984)

We won’t know whether AI will nuke us all until it’s too late to go back in time to fix it. But so far, it seems more likely to rot our brains.

9. Her (2013)

An AI romantic companion who fills us with incomparable love but leaves us spiraling in psychosis? Surely you jes—

10. Project Hail Mary (2026)

Sure, Rocky himself wasn’t AI, but it was only because of AI that we could understand anything he said. Feel the hopecore (and the translation app that goes beyond German).

11. A.I. (2001)

In the year named for a Kubrick hit, we got Spielberg finishing a Kubrick passion project. An AI helping us cope with loss seems on point for 2026 and … maybe not the worst use case?

12. Short Circuit (1986)

Johnny 5 is alive. OK, so he probably wasn’t really alive; the sentience part isn’t so accurate. Yet a cheeky-but-game AI pet we feel unrelenting devotion to doesn’t seem so far off from where we’re headed.

13. Transcendence (2014)

Christopher Nolan DP Wally Pfister told this tale of an AI Johnny Depp that may be going rogue but just may really love Rebecca Hall. It’s optimistic and … possibly possible?

14. I, Robot (2004)

In addition to assuming we can pull the plug on disobedient AI (unlikely), the movie violates the unwritten Fourth Law of Robotics: Do no harm to Isaac Asimov’s legacy.