Overview
- Martin Scorsese has accepted an advisory role with German startup Black Forest Labs and appeared in promotional sessions for FLUX, a generative AI tool that makes images from text for rapid storyboards.
- The Art Directors Guild (IATSE Local 800) published a public rebuke calling Scorsese’s promotion of FLUX “a betrayal” and saying the tool sidelines the work of art directors, production designers and illustrators.
- The guild alleges models like FLUX are trained on large amounts of copyrighted material taken from the internet without consent, credit or compensation, raising copyright and ethical concerns.
- Scorsese says he tested FLUX in preproduction and finds it useful for speeding communication and visualizing ideas, framing the tool as an extension of past filmmaking technologies he has used.
- The dispute revives industry tensions over AI and labor after recent actors’ and writers’ strikes and could prompt new bargaining fights over jurisdiction, pay and transparency around training data.