This was obviously going to cause controversy. Yesterday, I wrote about Martin Scorsese’s sudden embrace of AI for storyboarding—specifically his role as an adviser to Black Forest Labs, a fast-growing AI image-generation company behind tools like FLUX.
Of course, backlash was inevitable—and it has arrived. He is now the most prominent, most respected filmmaker to publicly endorse generative AI. Some of the anti-Scorsese comments online are incredibly unhinged.
Yet, his support of Black Forest Labs is all framed around storyboarding, which some see as legitimizing the replacement of traditional storyboard artists and early-stage visual development work with AI systems.
That said, Scorsese has always storyboarded himself and has rarely hired outside parties for that process. It’s not as if someone has directly lost a job because of it.
Now, “I Love Boosters” filmmaker Boots Riley has responded in a sharply critical post. He suggests that Scorsese’s endorsement of AI tools may be financially motivated, speculating that at 83, Scorsese could have been offered significant compensation benefiting his family and is therefore less concerned about the long-term consequences of legitimizing AI in filmmaking. Riley ends his comments by doubling down on his criticism and, separately, promoting his own film “I Love Boosters.”
My guess: at 83, they gave his family a gang of money (they throw tens of millions left & right) he wanted the income stream 4 them & feels like "AI" will fall on its face anyway, so he doesn’t give a fck. If that's not the case, extra f*ck him. Separately, go see I Love Boosters today
A glance at Black Forest Labs’ website suggests its tools are primarily designed for generating still images, concept art, storyboards, and other visual assets—meaning, in practice, they are aimed at supporting filmmakers in the pre-production process. As far as I can tell, they are not in the business of AI being used during production. For now, at least. Same goes for Scorsese, who I’m willing to bet, especially the way things are going right now, could very well use AI in his films before the decade ends.
Ultimately, the tension around the controversy seems to be less about Scorsese himself and more about what his involvement signals .. that even filmmakers historically associated with craftsmanship and cinematic tradition are now engaging directly with generative AI companies. The list of filmmakers exploring or engaging with AI continues to grow: Scorsese, Darren Aronofsky, Roger Deakins, Brady Corbet, Michael Mann, James Cameron, Paul Schrader, Werner Herzog, George Miller, Doug Liman, Alex Proyas, and Roger Avary.
Interestingly enough, Michael Bay, of all people, is strongly opposed to AI.
No official figure has been reported, but best guess is the budget landed somewhere in the $10M range. HBO pre-bought the streaming rights, but that was before David Ellison took over