The Art Directors Guild accuses the legendary director of ‘turning his back on the human artists’.
The Art Directors Guild released a statement on social media on Tuesday condemning Martin Scorsese’s recent partnership with AI startup Black Forest Labs, where he is using generative AI to produce concept art quicker.
Below is their full statement:
Mr. Scorsese, The Business is not in flux.
Oscar winning director Martin Scorsese is turning his back on the human artists who throughout his career have helped him create his most memorable works.
In the recently released Black Forest Labs video promoting their generative AI product FLUX, Mr. Scorsese asks the question, “how do you communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew?” He claims the solution is the use of this generative AI program to do the jobs that are rightfully the jurisdiction of Art Directors Guild Local 800 artists and designers – human artists and designers who have been successfully collaborating with directors to visualize their films for decades. Mr. Scorsese’s promotion of a generative AI product circumvents the input of Art Directors Guild Local 800 art directors, graphic artists, illustrators, production designers, scenic artists, set designers, and other talented Union professionals.
Generative AI is only capable of producing this type of “cinematic intelligence” by ingesting large swaths of copyrighted work, likely scraped from the internet without consent, credit, compensation, or transparency.
The skills of Art Directors Guild Local 800 artists and designers bring the highest level of value to any film or television production. To think their professional contributions can be mimicked or outshone by generative AI, which is built on work likely stolen from them and many other artists from around the world, is a betrayal of the collaborative nature of cinema.
Earlier this month, Black Forest Labs unveiled Scorsese as its new advisor in an effort to ‘push the bounds of creativity to create deeper and richer experiences for audiences.’
In Scorsese’s own statement about the partnership, he said cinema ‘is a young medium’ and that filmmakers ‘have to be open to how it can evolve.’
With this tool, I can share what I’m visualizing more clearly and efficiently to my creative team — the production designer, art designer, and cinematographer — for them to build on to enrich cinematic intelligence.
— Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese or his reps have yet to respond to the Art Directors Guild.
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