Hollywood Is Quietly Hiring for AI Even as It Fights the Technology

A Los Angeles Times review of Hollywood job postings found more than one in 10 open positions was likely connected to artificial intelligence, revealing a widening gap between the industry’s public caution and its internal investment.

Hans Brian Brandsberg Berg from Kalmar, SWEDEN, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Hollywood’s relationship with artificial intelligence has become increasingly difficult to describe as resistance. While actors, filmmakers and studios continue to fight over AI training, copyright and synthetic performances in public, entertainment companies are quietly building teams to use the technology themselves.

A Los Angeles Times analysis published July 27 examined hundreds of entertainment-industry job postings from late June and found that more than one in 10 was likely connected to AI. The positions weren't limited to technology companies trying to sell Hollywood software. Major entertainment companies themselves were recruiting employees to develop AI tools, integrate them into production and protect studio intellectual property from unauthorized use by outside AI companies.

That combination may be the clearest picture yet of Hollywood’s complicated AI strategy: build it and defend against it at the same time.

Among the positions identified were a principal AI executive role at Amazon MGM Studios and a production innovation technologist position at Walt Disney Studios. Other companies are similarly staffing up around artificial intelligence even while remaining cautious about publicly discussing exactly where generative tools are being deployed. Yoland Yan, co-founder of ComfyUI, which helps studios manage different AI tools, told the Times that there are studios hiring around AI that rarely discuss those efforts publicly.

The secrecy is understandable. Generative AI remains one of Hollywood’s most politically sensitive technologies. SAG-AFTRA and the WGA won contractual protections around artificial intelligence following the 2023 strikes, while artists, studios and rights holders continue challenging AI companies over the material used to train their models. Audiences have also proved capable of turning suspected AI usage into a publicity problem almost overnight.

But the economic incentives are becoming harder for studios to ignore.

Hollywood companies are looking at AI across a wide range of functions, from visual development and production workflows to marketing, localization and corporate operations. Some of the industry's largest recent deals have moved well beyond experimentation. In June, Lionsgate expanded its relationship with Runway by taking an equity stake in the AI company and agreeing to jointly develop new intellectual property. Their first planned project is a short-form episodic series drawing from Lionsgate’s existing IP and Runway’s generative models.

A24 made an even larger financial commitment. Google invested roughly $75 million as part of an AI research partnership between A24 and DeepMind. Importantly, the agreement does not give Google access to A24’s film library or data. Instead, the companies are working together on AI technologies intended for filmmakers.

Those deals help explain why the job postings matter. Hollywood’s AI debate has often focused on individual tools: whether a particular shot was generated, whether an actor’s likeness can be replicated or whether a screenplay can be fed into a model. Hiring tells a different story. Companies do not recruit executives, engineers and production technologists merely to experiment with a chatbot. They hire them because they expect the technology to become part of their operations.

That does not mean studios have abandoned their concerns about AI. In some cases, the same companies adopting the technology are simultaneously trying to prevent AI developers from exploiting their copyrighted characters, films and performances without permission. What can look like hypocrisy is also an emerging business strategy: Hollywood wants the productivity benefits of artificial intelligence while retaining control over the intellectual property that makes those systems commercially valuable.

The Times numbers suggest that transition is already underway, even if studios aren't eager to advertise it.

Hollywood spent the first phase of the generative AI boom asking whether the technology belonged inside the entertainment business. Its hiring patterns suggest that question is becoming outdated. The industry's next fight will be over something more consequential: who controls the AI Hollywood is now hiring people to build.