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Reel AI: Erik Barmack’s biweekly article for The Ankler
‘Run It Through GPT-5’: The Phrase Changing Hollywood Overnight
Sora 2 and the Day Hollywood Went to War
Erik Barmack’s Reel AI Column from The Ankler
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CAA Tells OpenAI: Pay the People Who Built Hollywood Before Your Bots Replace Them
The powerhouse agency pushes regulators and studios to guarantee consent, credit, and compensation as Sora’s viral video tool tests how far creators’ rights can bend before breaking.

Sora 2 and the Day Hollywood Went to War
Forget Tilly Norwood. OpenAI’s new cinematic model can fake anyone and anything — and power players finally draw their line

Netflix’s New $700K AI Job Goes to a Human, Not a Machine
The streamer’s latest hire isn’t a robot—it’s a high-priced product manager tasked with building generative tools to make 13,000 employees more efficient.

YouTube Unveils “Likeness Detection” to Help Creators Fight—or Profit From—AI Clones
YouTube CEO outlines upcoming tools to identify synthetic faces and voices, giving creators the power to monetize or remove deepfaked versions of themselves.

Sora Explodes in Popularity - and in Controversy - as OpenAI’s Video App Floods Feeds with Disturbing Clips
The new tool’s instant success has also exposed how quickly synthetic imagery can veer into violence, racism, and unlicensed mimicry before moderation can catch up.

Union Uproar Over Digital “Actress” Tilly Norwood Sparks Hollywood’s First True AI Identity Crisis
The debut of a fully AI-generated actress at the Zurich Film Festival sparks outrage from unions and actors who see the project as a test case for digital displacement.

Robin Williams’ daughter Zelda Slams AI Deepfakes of Her Father: “This Isn’t Tribute, It’s Exploitation”
The actor’s emotional plea intensifies calls for stronger posthumous-likeness laws and platform safeguards against unauthorized digital “resurrections.”

‘Run It Through GPT-5’: The Phrase Changing Hollywood Overnight
Showrunners, writers, producers & marketing jumped on OpenAI’s update. Industry jobs will never recover

OpenAI Investor Vinod Khosla Says Hollywood’s “Tunnel-Vision Creatives” Are Missing the Point of Sora
The billionaire venture capitalist argues that AI video will broaden—not shrink—the creator class, even as studios and unions brace for disruption.

Karan Johar Slams AI “Remix” of Bollywood Film Raanjhanaa, Calling It a Violation of Creative Intent
The filmmaker Karan Johar ’s rebuke of an AI-generated alternate ending for Raanjhanaa ignites a wider debate in Bollywood over authorship, consent, and the future of legacy film catalogs.

Disney’s Lawyers Strike Back: Character.AI Ordered to Delete Fan-Made Elsa, Moana, and Darth Vader Bots
The takedown draws a legal boundary between fandom and infringement, signaling how aggressively studios will guard signature voices and personalities in the conversational-AI era.

Hollywood’s New Power Title: “AI Production Engineer”
At Variety’s annual summit, producers report 30 percent faster prep cycles as AI reshapes pre-viz and scheduling—proof that automation is becoming infrastructure, not experiment.

OpenAI’s Sora Tops One Million Downloads in Five Days, Igniting the Fastest AI Video Boom Yet
Marketers and indie filmmakers rush to use the new generative-video app as regulators scramble to define what authenticity means in an age of instant cinematography.

OpenAI’s $30M Animated Film is Coming. Pixar Should Be Worried
‘Critterz’ will be made in 9 months and debut at Cannes ’26. The existential stakes couldn’t be higher

OpenAI-Backed “Critterz” Aims to Prove Generative Animation Can Carry a Movie, Not Just a Meme
With a budget under $30 million and a tiny crew, the film’s hybrid pipeline could redefine mid-tier animation economics if audiences embrace its algorithm-assisted artistry.

Musk’s X-Integrated Insta-Deepfakes: More Insidious Than You Imagine
Grok Imagine’s hellish ecosystem where writers, actors, directors — and copyright itself — cease to matter

Showrunner to Recreate Orson Welles’ Missing 43 Minutes: AI Meets Film History in a Risky Experiment
The Amazon-backed AI studio behind user-generated TV episodes turns its tools toward The Magnificent Ambersons, blending live action and generative reconstruction to restore what Hollywood once destroyed.

Sphere’s ‘Wizard of Oz’: Hollywood’s Dazzling Future or Dark Warning?
Sphere’s ‘Wizard of Oz’: For audiences, it’s breathtaking; for the workforce, it’s a test

‘What’s Ethical AI?’: The AI CEO Netflix, A24 & Disney Rely On (But Can’t Control)
Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela tells me regulation will ‘stifle’ innovation, and he won't put the genie back in the bottle: ‘You take the responsibility’

European Voice Actors Rally Against AI Dubbing, Warn of Artistic Decay
Voice performers across Europe—including veteran dub actor Boris Rehlinger—are mobilizing against the unregulated use of AI for content localization, arguing that emotion and nuance can’t be automated.