“Mr. Scorsese, The Business is not in flux.” That is how the Art Directors Guild opens its statement against one of the best-known directors alive.
The guild, IATSE Local 800, issued it on Tuesday. It accuses Martin Scorsese of a “betrayal of the collaborative nature of cinema” after he promoted Flux, a generative AI tool from Black Forest Labs, as a way to storyboard films. Last week the company announced Scorsese as an advisor, helping shape what it calls its “visual intelligence.”
The guild’s complaint
The statement points to the company’s video for Flux, where Scorsese asks how a director communicates what he sees in his head to cast and crew. The guild says he answers by handing that job to software.
“He claims the solution is the use of this generative AI program to do the jobs that are rightfully the jurisdiction of Art Directors Guild Local 800 artists and designers,” the guild wrote. Those are people, it added, who have worked with directors for decades to picture their films. The guild says the promotion “circumvents the input” of its art directors, graphic artists, illustrators, production designers, scenic artists and set designers.
It went further on how these tools are built. Generative AI, the guild wrote, rests on “work likely stolen from them and many other artists from around the world.”
Scorsese’s case
In the company’s announcement, Scorsese said he has made his own storyboards for 70 years. “There are some things you have to see and feel,” he said. He pointed to cinema’s age, only about 125 years, and said it should stay open to change. He recalled using 3D on Hugo and de-aging technology on The Irishman.
He also described a test. He tried the tool on a scene, he said, and found that visualizing a storyboard and sharing it at once was “creatively freeing.” The images go to his production designer, art designer and cinematographer to build on. “During the pre-production process, time costs money, and this allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft,” he said.
The guild’s closing line gives its answer: it calls the idea that its members’ work can be copied or bettered by AI a betrayal.
The fight sits in a wider argument over AI in Hollywood. SAG-AFTRA has endorsed the Trump administration’s AI policy framework, which asks Congress to pass laws covering parental controls, intellectual property and First Amendment protections. Last week Trump signed an executive order setting up a voluntary system in which AI companies give the government 30 days to review new models before release.
