AI Quietly Integrates into Hollywood's Engine Room, Raising Questions for the Future

Forget AI-written blockbusters for a moment. The immediate story of artificial intelligence in Hollywood isn't about creative takeover; it's about administrative adaptation. With studios trimming budgets and assistants supporting multiple executives, generative AI tools are becoming a quiet, daily utility for the industry's support staff.

Interviews with a dozen anonymous assistants reveal these tools handle the unglamorous bulk of the job: composing emails, condensing notes from creative meetings, managing gift lists, and summarizing scripts. This use is often unsanctioned, with staff pasting sensitive materials like client schedules and deal terms into public AI chatbots due to a lack of corporate-provided alternatives or training.

Warner Bailey, founder of Assistants vs. Agents, notes this 'shadow AI' poses clear security risks. He points out that a Gen Z workforce, already fluent with these tools from school, is importing habits into workplaces with obsolete internal systems and no guidance.

The application even touches core creative workflows. Some assistants upload unpublished manuscripts to large language models to generate 'coverage'—the foundational script analysis that kicks off development. But veterans like Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University's film school, argue the results are inherently lacking. 'AI can't summarize emotion. It can't define if a character is original,' he states.

The tension for assistants is palpable. While AI helps manage unsustainable workloads, many fear they are simultaneously training their potential replacements or stunting the skill development needed for promotion. As one studio assistant put it, the fear is that streamlining leads to more bosses per assistant, not advancement.

For now, Galloway suggests the greater threat to Hollywood's traditional apprenticeship model is industry-wide contraction, not software. But as AI becomes embedded in the daily grind from the bottom up, it is reshaping the foundational rungs of the career ladder, for better or worse.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter