As the Oscars approach, Hollywood grapples with the growing influence of AI on filmmaking

It’s testament to how quickly artificial intelligence’s relationship with filmmaking is evolving: each week brings new – often shocking – developments.

The next morning in class, my students and I debate the ethics, aesthetics, and storytelling changes that occur in these collaborations with AI.

And we’re not alone: ​​All across Hollywood, everyone — aspiring actors and filmmakers, stars, screenwriters and studio executives — seems to have an opinion on what’s going to happen next. But I think three trends in particular will be hot topics of conversation at this year’s Oscar parties.

There is nothing supernatural in this clip

In February 2026, a 15-second AI-generated video clip of Tom Cruise battling Brad Pitt on a burnt-out highway overpass went viral.

Depending on the audience, the video was met with either praise, outrage or existential hand-wringing.

Created by Irish filmmaker Ruairi Robinson through a generative-AI tool called Seedance 2.0, the video marks another milestone in the inspiring evolution of AI tools.

SeeDance 2.0 – which was developed by ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok – is one of several AI tools now available for creating short-form video clips. But unlike most AI-generated videos, Pitt and Cruise don’t look scary, alien or animated in the clip, which almost perfectly mimics live-action footage. The appearance of two A-list stars in a fairly realistic scene created using stolen likenesses by a relatively unknown director shocked the industry.

The reaction was intense. Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter, claiming that the video was generated from a dataset that likely contains Disney’s copyrighted characters. The actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, pointed out the “gross violation” of the actors’ likenesses as well as their voices in the video.

“SAG-AFTRA stands with studios in condemning the blatant violations enabled by ByteDance’s new AI video model CDance 2.0,” the guild wrote in a statement. This practice, the guild said, “undermines the ability of human talent to earn a living,” disregarding “law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent.”

In class, after watching the video, we explored the ethics of using someone’s likeness without permission, the challenges faced by actors who build careers based on their unique ability to embody characters, and the future for our understanding of acting.

If filmmakers can inspire simulated actors to deliver pitch-perfect performances, where does that leave human actors?

with the old

Since 2023, the skyline of the Las Vegas Strip has been dominated by an illuminated arena called the Sphere: an entertainment complex featuring a 360-degree LED screen covering 160,000 square feet. The Sphere recently surpassed 2 million tickets sold for its reimagining of the classic 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.”

The film, which premiered in August 2024, was shortened, enhanced in color, and expanded to include the interior of the dome. AI was used to transfer imagery from the film’s original, modest aspect ratio to the giant dome. This required generating new imagery around the edges of the original shots in a process known as “AI outpainting”. The technology was also deployed to increase the resolution of the original film and enhance some scenes.

Some critics expressed concern that this overly radical expansion of the original classic would offend audiences. Instead, it has drawn them to the arena in large numbers, where they are willing to spend between US$100 and US$200 per ticket.

Not bad for a movie about a girl in Kansas in 1939.

Given the runaway success of “The Wizard of Oz,” experts expect producers to scour film archives for other potential hits and enhance them with AI before screening them at various venues like IMAX theaters and the Cosm, another 360-degree dome with locations in Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta.

Or AI could simply be used to create content that was never completed for a historical film.

In fact, The New Yorker recently profiled AI media entrepreneur Edward Saatchi, who is working to reconstruct and reconstruct lost footage of Orson Welles’s 1942 feature “The Magnificent Ambersons.” While Welles was shooting a documentary in Brazil, executives at RKO Radio Pictures re-edited the film without their approval after a poor preview screening. They cut about 45 minutes, replaced the original ending with a better ending, and destroyed most of the deleted footage.

Saatchi’s idea is to create a dataset that includes the existing film as well as scripts, notes, images and even new performances by the actors. He then plans to use his AI platform, Showrunner, to create new scenes from this data.

While Saatchi hopes to honor the director’s creative vision by producing the film as originally intended, his efforts raise some thorny questions.

Is it appropriate to take an existing artwork and modify it without the creator’s input? Isn’t there something sacred in a film’s original form, the director’s intentions and the actors’ performances? If revamping old films will introduce them to new audiences, then to what extent should these questions be ignored?

slim chance?

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There’s an undercurrent of anxiety in my classes, too. My students often wonder what will happen after graduation?

They’re concerned that within a year or two, AI will have replaced entry-level film industry jobs, from concept artists to trainee-level editors, before they even have a chance to enter the workforce.

They have reason to be afraid.

In 2024, the Animation Guild published a dire report claiming that by 2026, “creative workers will face an era of disruption, defined by the consolidation of some job roles, the replacement of existing job roles with new roles, and the elimination of many jobs altogether.”

Some of those predictions have proven true: 41,000 jobs in film and television have disappeared in Los Angeles County alone over the past three years.

But I’ve tried to counter the hard statistics with some stories of thoughtful practices.

For example, filmmaker Paul Trillo at AI studio Asteria has talked about how he wants to put artists at the center of the process. When he detailed the company’s work on a music video for singer-songwriter Cuco, he was keen to highlight the number of artists who worked on the project. Yes, AI tools were used. But they were integrated in such a way that they replaced drudgery rather than creative exercise.

“Instead of deleting [artists] Through this process, it really allowed them to do a lot so that a small team could dream big,” Trillo explains at the end of the video.

In January 2026, management consulting firm McKinsey published a report that largely echoed Trillo’s positive outlook. This anticipates further adoption of AI across the industry. But it also points to the ways in which technology can give rise to different types of work and open up new possibilities. For example, as AI-generated scenes become more common, studios will need technicians who know how to blend real footage with digitally created worlds. And as AI drives down the cost of producing sophisticated movies and shows, it could allow more “micro-studios” and independent filmmakers to create professional-quality content.

Additionally, the report also quotes a studio executive who believes AI “could represent a more significant platform shift in our industry than ever before.”

So it’s no surprise that various critics, commentators and industry professionals as well as my students are nervous.

However, as far as I stand, I am confident that the industry will withstand this radical disruption. It has adapted to major changes in the past: the addition of sound in the 1920s, the threat posed by videotape in the 1980s, and streaming in the 2000s.

Ultimately, people will always crave new, artfully told stories. While filmmaking equipment and the job market may be in flux, the basic need for storytelling is not going away. AIIMS

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