Scorsese Backs AI

I would not have guessed Scorsese would jump on the AI bandwagon. James Cameron, for sure. Par for the course. He always seems to want to incorporate emerging tech of the time into his latest film, But Scorsese? Not only is he advocating for its use and using it to storyboard his own work, but he is directly partnering with and promoting the products of tech company Black Forest Labs.

As a counterpoint, last month Guillermo del Toro “slammed those who believe ‘art can be done with a fucking app’ and last year the filmmaker said he would ‘rather die’ than use generative AI in his films.”

I say this with tremendous amounts of admiration for Scorsese as a filmmaker, as well as recognizing the philanthropic work he has done by promoting lesser-known directors from regions whose cinema is often overlooked through his World Cinema Project. He’s used his name and reputation to help a lot of folks in the creative arts when he could have just sat on his laurels. There is no question about that.

All of which is why I am surprised he would come out in favor of using gen AI in cinema. I can perhaps grant that he is not aware of the environmental issues, such as the water and energy consumption. But I would have assumed he was aware of the debates around copyright, especially from the point of view of the arts. How large language models are trained on the creative works of humans without their consent, and how the output is then a mix-and-match from that humongous (many would argue stolen) data set. Surely he has heard these arguments, and seen the push back from folks in the field, such as writers, visual artists, actors, and other directors? It comes across as a bit tone-deaf to me.

Then I saw in the article that Scorsese’s spokesperson said “he was introduced to the firm through the investment firm BroadLight Capital, an investor in Black Forest Labs that was co-founded by Rick Yorn, Scorsese’s manager.” So, his manager is co-founder of an investment firm that has invested in Black Forest Labs, and now Scorsese is out there promoting the company.

Not looking good, Maestro.