{"id":128956,"date":"2026-08-04T10:43:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T10:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/128956\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T10:43:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T10:43:19","slug":"everyone-is-doing-it-the-truth-about-ai-in-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/128956\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Everyone Is Doing It\u2019: The Truth About AI in Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want a clear understanding of how AI<\/a> is affecting Hollywood \u2026 good luck.<\/p>\n

Some of the industry loathes the technology<\/a>, with screenwriters, directors, and actors alike vowing never to use AI in their work\u2014or collaborate with those who do. Others are much more open<\/a> to the potential for AI to act as everything from creative partner to cost-cutting engine. And a rare few, Ben Affleck included, are already making millions by capitalizing on AI\u2019s nascent potential to (they argue) streamline and improve the filmmaking process.<\/p>\n

At WIRED, we\u2019re constantly doing our best to document AI\u2019s transformational effects on the entertainment business, for better and for worse. (If you haven\u2019t read Ruth Fowler\u2019s recent essay<\/a> for us, on going from a screenwriter to an underemployed LLM trainer, I highly recommend it.) But in an effort to get the most nuanced possible view, I wanted to talk to someone who knows the industry and its players inside and out.<\/p>\n

Matt Belloni, a founding partner at Puck, has covered Hollywood for decades. He writes a scoopy newsletter (What I\u2019m Hearing \u2026<\/a>) and hosts a scoopy podcast (The Town<\/a>) that frequently focus on AI and Big Tech as both become increasingly dominant forces across entertainment. Belloni also happens to be a former lawyer, making him the ideal person to ask about the ongoing, and highly consequential, debates over AI and copyright, IP, and celebrity likeness.<\/p>\n

Belloni was generous enough to give me an hour of his time, and we managed to cover all the bases\u2014from whether Hollywood types side-eyed Ben Affleck after he sold<\/a> an AI startup to Netflix for $587 million, to just how much control Big Tech companies now wield over the entertainment industry. You can read our conversation below or listen wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

KATIE DRUMMOND: Matt, I have to start with the obvious, which is artificial intelligence<\/a>. You’ve been on top of AI in Hollywood for a very long time, and you’ve said multiple times that, quote, \u201ceveryone is doing it,\u201d meaning everyone [in the industry] is using AI. What exactly do you mean by that?<\/p>\n

MATTHEW BELLONI: Well, there’s two types of AI, as you know. There’s generative AI, which is content creation and things like that, and then there’s what I refer to as the corporate AI, like streamlining processes and better search results. Obviously, on the second one, everyone is using it.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to name a name, but I heard a very interesting story about a very prominent showrunner who went into the writer’s room and basically castigated her writing team for not using ChatGPT to help with the process.<\/p>\n

To help with the creative process? Or the admin and bookkeeping?<\/p>\n

The creative process. Here’s a scenario, suggest some jokes. Here’s this, this, this. It doesn’t mean they use them. You could do the same thing with Google. It’s just better, and people are using it. I know, I’ve talked to screenwriters who use it to suggest scenarios or to give a description of the inside of a building where they want a scenario to play out, or things that to me seem like part of the process.<\/p>\n

You may not know this, but the Writers Guild is actually OK with that. As long as there is a credited writer on every script and that this process doesn’t impact jobs, they’re OK with the use of this technology.<\/p>\n

That’s one side. Then the other side is generative and how this is making content. There it’s a little murkier, because there are a lot of studios that are purporting to create AI-generated movies, shorts, TV pilots. I’ve seen a lot of them. They’re not great. They’re better in animation, and I think this is where we’re going to see the disruption first, but you can always kinda tell, and that’s the problem when you’re trying to relate to people. I can’t wait to see what Elon’s historically accurate version of The Odyssey looks like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you want a clear understanding of how AI is affecting Hollywood \u2026 good luck. Some of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,61399,309,5887,157,1927,2391,28601],"class_list":["post-128956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-big-interview","tag-business","tag-hollywood","tag-openai","tag-podcasts","tag-qa","tag-uncanny-valley-podcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}