Scorsese faces backlash over advisory role at AI image startup

Martin Scorsese’s move into generative AI quickly became a fight over who gets to shape the future of filmmaking. The Oscar-winning director said on June 2 that he had joined Black Forest Labs, a German image-generation startup founded in Freiburg in 2024, as an adviser and had used its FLUX tool to storyboard scenes for a new project.

Scorsese framed the decision as an extension of cinema’s own evolution. He said film is a young medium, about 125 years old, and should remain open to new tools as it develops. Black Forest Labs embraced that message, saying it wanted to “push the bounds of creativity” and presenting Scorsese’s involvement as validation for its effort to bring visual intelligence into production workflows.

The reaction in Hollywood was immediate and harsh. The Art Directors Guild condemned the partnership as a “betrayal of the collaborative nature of cinema” and accused Scorsese of “turning his back on the human artists” who helped build his most celebrated films. The guild said the technology could bypass work done by Art Directors Guild Local 800 members, including art directors, graphic artists, illustrators, production designers, scenic artists and set designers.

The backlash landed especially hard because Scorsese had described FLUX as a tool for communication, not replacement. He said it could help him explain ideas more clearly and efficiently to his creative team, including production designers, art designers and cinematographers. That distinction did little to calm critics who saw a revered director lending prestige to a company selling automation into an already uneasy labor market.

The deal also fed a larger Hollywood dispute over jobs and control. The Directors Guild of America was preparing to negotiate issues including jobs, AI and healthcare in May 2026, and the industry was still absorbing the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, when AI protections were a major point of contention. Filmmaker Boots Riley mocked the announcement online and speculated that Scorsese had been paid a large sum, though he later said his bigger objection was Scorsese using his influence to normalize the technology.

Black Forest Labs said Scorsese came to the company through BroadLight Capital, co-founded by his manager Rick Yorn, and that CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz also helped seal the partnership. It remained unclear whether Scorsese personally invested in the firm. However it was structured, the episode underscored how quickly generative AI has become a test of trust inside Hollywood, where prestige itself is now part of the product being sold.