Hollywood Embraces AI Films as Audience Interest Becomes More Mixed

Hollywood executives are exploring AI-made films even as searches suggest audiences are paying more attention to whether AI was involved. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the veteran executive who co-founded DreamWorks, has announced an AI-focused studio. He told TheWrap that AI output had been “slop” until recently, but said something had changed in the past couple of months. He wants to make feature films and television with AI, arguing that lower production costs could enable more films and new kinds of storytelling.

The Gifted, an AI-generated trailer, won a Future Vision XPRIZE competition that puts $2.5 million toward developing it into a feature film. Separately, movie production planning platform Filmustage analyzed Google Trends data and reported that searches for “movies with no AI” rose 345% in the past month, while searches for “movies made with AI” increased 112%. The source cautions that Google Trends increases can be large and says the figures should not be overinterpreted.

Tom Cruise said during a BAFTA “Life in Pictures” conversation in London that AI “is coming,” but that “people want to see real things.” Utopai Studios executive Kevin Chong described AI as another filmmaking tool, not a replacement for actors. He said actors’ interpretation, emotion, instinct and life experience remain fundamental to storytelling. The debate, then, is not only about production costs: audiences and filmmakers are also weighing what AI can contribute and what human performances bring to films.