How Hollywood Legend Martin Scorsese Became An Unlikely AI Ally

Hollywood and the creative arts’ disdain for AI is well known with recent instances such as Oscar-winning Guillermo del Toro saying “f*** AI” at the Cannes Film Festival. Several others share the ‘Frankenstein’ (2025) director’s sentiment. In the backdrop of this, artificial intelligence (AI), seems to have now found an unlikely ally.  Acclaimed filmmaker Martin Scorsese – a legend of the industry and the man behind some of Hollywood’s most iconic films such as Taxi Driver and The Departed – has signed on as a partner and adviser to AI image-generation startup Black Forest Labs. The handshake reportedly happened last year, but Scorsese has come out and spoken about it now.

“I’m interested in the intersection of technology and storytelling, and seeing how that can push the bounds of creativity to create deeper and richer experiences for audiences,” the 16-time Oscar nominee said in a statement he shared with The New York Times (NYT). “Remember, cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve,” the 83-year-old added.

Closer home, there’s Shekhar Kapur – the highly acclaimed, award-winning filmmaker with a celebrated career spanning both Indian and international cinema – who is a vocal supporter of AI. The National Award and BAFTA winner even predicts a future where AI-powered digital actors will become mainstream and potentially replace traditional human stars.

However, Scorsese, at least for now, doesn’t have any such notions. He wants to use AI for storyboarding – the process of mapping out a story or a film before going into production. Unlike some AI advocates who envision synthetic actors and fully AI-generated films, Scorsese’s interest thus far seems more practical. He sees AI as a tool for visualizing scenes and creating storyboards, not replacing the human creativity at the heart of filmmaking.

“For 70 years, I’ve been creating my own storyboards,” Scorsese said in the statement to NYT. “There’s always been this problem of how do you communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew. There are some things you have to see and feel.”
“Now with this tool,” he said, “I can share what I’m visualizing more clearly and efficiently to my creative team – the production designer, art designer and cinematographer.”
He added: “I recently tested this out on a scene, and the ability to visualize and immediately share the storyboard was creatively freeing. During the preproduction process, time costs money, and this allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft.”

The Creative Divide

There is palpable tension in Hollywood as well as the global creative industry around AI and the disruption it may cause to both the arts and the livelihoods linked to the industry. The anxiety came to a boil in 2023 when over 1,70,000 Hollywood workers went on strike to protest against AI and seek protections from it. The anger is very evident. At Cannes, for instance, Del Toro’s frustration was loud and public when he said “art can’t be done with a f***ing app.”

There have also been outliers such as actor Demi Moore who recently said at the very same Cannes Film Festival that fighting AI altogether may ultimately be “a battle that we will lose.” Then there’s American filmmaker duo the Russo brothers – the directors of Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War – who have repeatedly argued that AI will become an important filmmaking tool.

Back in India, filmmaker Sarthak Dasgupta who directed films like Music Teacher starring Neena Gupta and 200: Halla Ho starring Amol Palekar tells NDTV that he’s pro-technology, AI included while discussing the intersection of art and artificial intelligence.

“Anything that lets a storyteller reach an audience deeper, make them feel more, and in the process economise effort, is welcome. Sound expanded what silent film could do; colour expanded black-and-white. It’s a process, and it never stops. The job is to adapt the new tool and do the work better – not to waste time fighting it,” Dasgupta said.

Not everyone is in agreement in India though. The divide evident in Hollywood is present here too. Filmmakers such as Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane have both expressed strong disapproval towards prioritising AI over human artists and workers.

Actor-Director Danish Husain offers a balanced view: “At the end of the day AI is just a tool. It may be a clever tool, it can do a lot of things but eventually storytelling will be done by humans.”

Drawing a parallel with earlier technological shifts, Husain pointed to the arrival of microphones in the early 20th century. “A lot of musicians resisted it, fearing it would capture their voice and they wouldn’t be able to sing. But slowly over time they realised how to use this technology,” he said.

“Much of the confusion right now stems from the fact that no one really has a handle on AI. We do not know its full potential, we are not clear about the threat, and we’re still fuzzy about the ways we can incorporate this technology into filmmaking,” he added.

In Hollywood, Titanic director James Cameron has warned against AI-generated performances replacing human storytelling, calling it “horrifying.” Steven Spielberg has similarly expressed discomfort with AI replacing creative individuals in filmmaking. “I am not for AI if it replaces a creative individual,” the E.T. director has said.

But Cameron’s take is perhaps one of the most deeply nuanced ones as he embraces generative AI (GenAI) for back-end VFX (visual effects) efficiency to save time and money, but draws a strict, philosophical hard line against it replacing human actors, writers, or the core creative process. In many ways, Scorsese’s position appears closer to Cameron’s than to either AI evangelists. Both see value in the technology as a filmmaking tool, while seemingly drawing a firm line at replacing the human creativity that sits at the heart of cinema.