tweeting about the ai creative world. covering the many opinions on ai, one video per day. i think ai should empower people and help them get paid.
Joined May 2008
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May 27
It’s been an entire year since we last published our last map, and so much has changed in the industry. Last year’s map had 100 companies listed, one year later, it’s over 250! More than double!
I was literally up late yesterday still adding companies to the list. The space has expanded considerably, example: no one even heard of Higgsfield early last year. And others have disappeared, like Sora2, or pivoted, like Pika. I expect this to continue as the space evolves further.
A few things worth noting before you dig into it:
> yes, there are lots of logos, a shareable website is coming soon
> we expanded the number of categories to reflect evolutions of the space
> aggregators, in particular, have exploded in the last year
> the amount of funding continues to go up, not down - the consolidation that many thought was coming has still not happened yet
> the model companies have largely stayed the same for a year while startups battle in lots of niche areas
> this map is only a taste of certain areas like AI ads and AI video games, which deserve their own maps
> read our substack for more!
ALT Machine Cinema AI Creative Market Map
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The most important thing you can have in the AI era isn’t skill, credits, a GPU, or even taste. It’s free time and idle hands.
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An 18-minute Seedance 2.0 detective short film is what you get when you have a stay-at-home dad in between chores. 🕵️♂️🎬
$2500 budget with some long, cinematic takes to break away from standard 15-second clips.
I wanted to see if I could pull off a full, gripping thriller right from my living room.
👇 Full 18-minute short film, BTS, and bloopers on YouTube in the comments!
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Get more legends embracing AI so we can be liberated from defending it and all get to the real work of making great stories.
Jun 11
“All of it is using technology for cinema - to tell a story that is in the mind’s eye” - Ron Howard
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Honestly, we’re just going to keep seeing more and more big filmmakers being open to AI in filmmaking and art and the Anti-AI crowd will have less and less arguments to make. The paradox is they’ll also get louder too. The problem for them is that they’ll increasingly sound whiny.
Ron Howard on AI:
“It’s very exciting in terms of its potential to more efficiently and more broadly help storytellers get their ideas out there,” Howard said of the hot-button tech. “There are so many facts yet to be sorted out,” he said, but added he thought the possibilities are very appealing and that others will agree. “We will want it.”
Howard was speaking at the Runway AI Film Festival at Lincoln Center in New York Thursday, where he talked on stage with the video-generation company’s co-founder Cris Valenzuela. That conversation followed a similar AI-themed talk from earlier this spring between Valenzuela and Kathleen Kennedy, who was more circumspect.
Perhaps most strikingly, Howard said that one of the most influential hand-crafted entertainers of the 20th century would also embrace AI if he was alive today.
“Jim Henson just wanted to be busy making [things],” said Howard, who came to know the Muppets creator well from working on the 2024 documentary about him Idea Man. “That’s what these tools make so available and why they’re so exciting.”
When asked about a backlash, Howard said, “You’re talking about change and people are worried about it. I’m worried about it, on a professional level. But again, our job is to experiment with it and learn from it and work with it,” adding, “It’s going to evolve. And audiences are going to tell us.”
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Ben Affleck making the salient case that the art director on Obsession should get a cut of the profits.
Ben Affleck says his entire movie crew gets a bonus if the film succeeds
"it's not like we're saints or philanthropists... it's completely self serving"
"in order to do the job well, everybody who's working on it has to be really invested and give a shit about the result"
"if this thing actually blows up and does really well, you should benefit from that"
"everyone got their rates, everyone got their hourly, no one cut anything"
"this is just an exercise in actually proving that it's not bullshit, that if there's success, you'll get some extra little success"
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I keep saying this but people don’t listen. Finally, someone gets it.
Gore Verbinski Says We Need a ‘Rating System’ for AI Use in Films: ‘If You Use AI to Write a Script, You Get an F’ variety.com/2026/film/global…
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Jun 13
It’s amazing what you can do in just 2 hours with AI tools.
Jun 12
I'd never tried AI video creation before today.
Here's what I created in 4hrs (and won the Best Overall prize!🙂)
Great Gen Jam at @JoinEdgeCity where @minhsmind taught us to use @PixVerse_
Edited with @capcutapp & added @ElevenLabs narration on top of it
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Jun 11
Cristobal, CEO of Runway, on AI:
"There's a lot of initial hesitation early on... today most of those hesitations have been crossed. Studios are fully embracing it. It's not if you are or you're not, it's like how deep are you right now? And with Lionsgate, we're very deep."
The discourse keeps shifting.
Are filmmakers actually as anti-AI as the discourse suggests?
@c_valenzuelab, co-founder and CEO of @runwayml:
"There's a lot of initial hesitation early on... today most of those hesitations have been crossed. Studios are fully embracing it. It's not if you are or you're not, it's like how deep are you right now? And with Lionsgate, we're very deep."
"It's a little bit of that 1% crew that's very loud that you might hear all the time."
"This festival we're hosting has had thousands of applications from creators all over the world for four years now. Ron Howard is speaking."
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Jun 11
Had so much fun presenting this morning at Edge City Esmerelda about AI creative tools, shifting sentiment around the space, and optimistic futures we can lean into for a new creative vision with AI. @JoinEdgeCity @EdgeEsmeralda
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Jun 11
Now having joined a massive community on telegram, I’m convinced Discord is superior to Telegram for community building. Telegram is a total mess. Discord isn’t much better, honestly.
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Jun 10
i swear the whole strategy in AI is just waiting to release after someone else releases.
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Jun 10
Where else in the world do you get big fat trees like this casually in people’s front yards?
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Jun 10
Art Directors Guild statement on Scorsese endorsing AI. They’re not happy.
Jun 9
The Art Directors Guild, IATSE Local 800 #adg800 has issued a statement on Martin Scorsese’s recent promotion of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI):
"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."
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Jun 10
The American companies are obliterating the Chinese companies on LLMs, coding, and Image models.
BUT.
The Chinese companies are destroying the American companies on AI video.
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Jun 10
The art director Sally Choi that all the myopic Hollywood bros hated on is winning today.
Capstone, the company that financed ‘OBSESSION’, is estimated to make $45M - $50M from the film after its success.
They will share this with the creative team, including director Curry Barker.
(Source: thewrap.com/creative-content…)
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Jun 8
I made a pleasant discovery last week that even Anti-AI folks will like AI content if it's done in a particular way or with content they like. In other words, there is a line for everyone. Even for people who are vehemently anti-AI. I'm also finding this to be true as I interview people on the street. It's essentially impossible to be a 100% purist.
In this case, I've recently been enjoying watching Game Of Thrones breakdowns, summaries, and clips. There's ton of content in that category but it's not infinite. The fanbase is still rabid and wants more content. This creator created a breakdown of Robert's Rebellion and it's interesting to read the comments from people who clearly have long-time misgivings about AI but are happy to see it used for this.
This is such an epiphany for me. And something I only would have come to because I went down the rabbithole of my favorite fandoms/IP/franchises. Game of Thrones is not an isolated occurrence. This is happening across AI fanfiction: anime, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Pokemon, etc.
The lesson for me here is that fans want content and if creators are using AI to deliver that content, it's considered acceptable. We're increasingly seeing more and more examples of this. The truth is you love what you love and if AI helps deliver more of that, you'll be happy. On one side, creators will find it more efficient/fast and their misgivings will erode. On the other side, fans are insatiable and want more content, and their misgivings will also disappear.
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Jun 8
The arrogance, indignation, spite, and lack of compassion from Hollywood folks for their own younger and more inexperienced peers is rot and exactly why Youtube, Tiktok, and microdramas are increasingly eating them for breakfast.
Jun 8
Obsession's art director is about the be the world's most almost famous barista
She has two credits to her name... a short film and OBSESSION
I never seen anyone speed run squandering opportunity this fast
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Jun 8
Last month, the legendary @MichellePhan came to our GenJam and jammed with AI tools!
There’s more and more creators/influencers these days that I’m seeing embracing AI as part of their workflow so they can spend more time focusing on what they care about most: creating.
If AI results in more high quality output of social image and video, why wouldn’t they adopt it? Their audiences want to see more of them.
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Jun 8
If a tool helps you get your vision on screen faster, you’ll probably use it. Efficiency will trump ethics.
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