Hollywood Producers Want AI Artists Who Can Do This One Thing

From a Hollywood thriller to a film market in Busan, productions are staffing AI artists like any other department, and they’re telling us exactly what they look for.

People are finally saying it out loud

Variety ran a piece this month where directors, producers, and studio executives talked about AI on the record. Not in vague terms. They talked about budgets, workflows, and who’s actually doing the work. For the last couple of years, most of that conversation happened behind closed doors, so this is new.

Producer Ryan Kavanaugh told Variety that AI brought the budget of Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi way down from what a traditional shoot would have cost. The more telling part was what happened after the director went public about his process. Filmmakers who’d been pushing back started calling Kavanaugh to ask if they could do the same thing on their own projects.

That tells you where the industry is right now. People want in. What they don’t have yet is a clear picture of who they need to hire.

55 AI artists, one film

You’ve probably heard about Killing Satoshi by now: big cast, one soundstage, the whole world of the film built in post. Here’s the part that got less attention. The work is being done by a team of 55 AI artists, working right alongside a traditional cast and crew. The producers have said they’re using AI for performance capture and environments, not to create fake actors.

Read that as a crew list. AI artists are a department on this film, with a job, a schedule, and a budget, same as camera or editorial. And that leaves producers with a practical problem: where do you find people who know AI and also know how a production runs? Right now there isn’t an obvious place to look. One company working on that is AI Casting Services. They’re building a marketplace where productions can find, vet, and book AI artists, with that work showing up as a real line item in the budget like any other department. It’s the kind of infrastructure this work needs if it’s going to happen on more than one movie.

If you’ve been wondering whether this work is real, here it is, on a major feature. The job is building environments and lighting that hold up behind real actors. Knowing AI gets you in the conversation. Knowing how films get made is what gets you hired.

Same setup, different places

Killing Satoshi isn’t a one-off. Jon Erwin, who created House of David, shot The Old Stories: Moses with Ben Kingsley on a virtual stage, with generative AI built into the production from the start. Erwin has said plainly that Moses wouldn’t exist without it, because it would have cost too much to make. He also thinks rising costs and long production schedules are a bigger threat to jobs than AI. We agree. Hollywood was losing jobs well before AI showed up.

Now look at what’s happening on the other side of the world. Earlier this month at the Asian Contents & Film Market in Busan, Korean director Kim Sung-soo, best known for 12.12: The Day, showed Worm Train, the first film he’s made with AI. He didn’t make it alone at a laptop. He put together a small team and ran it like a regular film set, with AI video producers working next to an animation art director, a live-action editor, and a music director. Some of those AI producers had only learned the tools this year.

On the same panel, Han Hyeri, CEO of the Korean studio Muam, said her company only brings on AI artists who have directed at least one live-action short film. Her reasoning: AI video ends up looking generic when nobody’s acting as a director and taking responsibility for what’s in the frame.

A Hollywood thriller, a faith-based series, and a Korean short film. Different directors, different audiences, same structure. Real actors and real crews at the center, with AI artists working inside the production instead of off to the side. And at least one studio is already hiring on that basis. If you’ve made a live-action film, even a short one, that counts for a lot.

Not everyone’s on board

We’re not going to pretend this is all good news. Gallup’s latest research shows more Americans think AI does more harm than good, and that number is growing. Variety reported on audience backlash against projects that used AI without being upfront about it. Steven Soderbergh had to defend the AI footage in his John Lennon documentary. And Killing Satoshi got pushback over a casting notice that said producers could adjust actors’ performances with AI.

Kathleen Grace, Lionsgate’s chief AI officer, told Variety it’s hard to sell a project when AI is the only hook. The productions that are getting this right deal with consent, credit, and disclosure from day one. Writers already have protections here. Under the WGA’s 2023 contract, studios can’t make writers use AI, and they have to disclose when anything they hand a writer includes AI-generated material.

Knowing this stuff makes you more hireable. A producer wants AI artists they can trust in a room with actors, unions, and the press.

Put This Into Practice

Look at your reel first. Right now productions are paying for environments and lighting built around real actors, so show them you can do that. Put generated environments behind live-action footage and make the lighting and perspective match. Standalone AI clips are fine, but they don’t show a producer what they need to see for this kind of job. And if you’ve never shot anything live-action, make a short. At least one studio is already using that as a cutoff.

Learn how a set talks. Performance capture, virtual production, plates, post schedules. These are the words people use on hybrid productions like Killing Satoshi and Moses. If you can explain where your work fits in a post schedule that runs for months, you sound like someone who’s been on a production, and that’s who gets hired.

Be ready for the consent and disclosure questions. Know what the WGA rules say. Keep track of where your source material comes from. Be clear about what in your work is generated and what was captured. Grace is right that the story has to come first, and if your work shows that, you’ll stand out.

Then make yourself easy to find. AI Casting Services is getting ready to open its marketplace to creators, and we’ll let you know how to get on it as soon as they announce. Watch your inbox, and get your best hybrid work ready now so it’s in front of producers when they open the doors.