New Delhi: Google has announced a “first-of-its-kind” collaboration with A24 Films, the studio behind Hollywood films like Marty Supreme, Hereditary, and Moonlight focused on filmmaking research and increasing the possibilities of storytelling.
While the specific goals, technical outputs and creative milestones will evolve over time, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said that the company believes the best way to create tools that empower artists is to work with them directly and develop new workflows and techniques.
“By collaborating with filmmakers and industry leaders like A24 from the beginning, we can build new AI features to support artists in authentic, meaningful storytelling that helps enable their creative vision,” Hassabis said in a statement.
A24’s 2014 film Ex Machina, directed by Alex Garland and starring Oscar Isaac, examines the nuances of what happens when deadly technology and human emotions collide. The film won Best Visual Effects at the 88th Academy Awards.
This is not the first time A24 has moved away from what its movies show about technology. In 2024, the studio shared a series of posters for one of its highest-grossing films, Civil War, on Instagram. Each poster presented a different American city within the film’s theme. Interestingly, the movie is about photojournalists, a profession that has also been affected by the rise of AI-generated images.
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A24 also gave this year one of the most critically acclaimed and box office hit films, Backrooms, directed by 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons. Parsons has shared that AI is genuinely harmful and that its consequences have already begun unfolding as generative AI becomes more popular in filmmaking.
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“Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using these tools; it defeats the purpose entirely for me,” he told Deadline. “If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would.”
But A24 is not the only one using AI for filmmaking. Earlier this month, legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese joined Black Forest Labs, an AI firm that specialises in image creation, as an advisor. In a video posted on social media by the firm, Scorsese claimed that he is using the company’s AI tools for creating storyboards for his untitled upcoming film.
(Edited by Stela Dey)