Martin Scorsese endorses AI tool for pre-production storyboards

Martin Scorsese has become an adviser to AI company Black Forest Labs and said the technology helped him generate storyboard images during pre-production. The 83-year-old director stated that he had always found it difficult to communicate his visual ideas to cast and crew through traditional storyboards.

He said the AI tool allowed him to visualize a scene and share it immediately with his production designer, art designer, and cinematographer. "I recently tested this out on a scene and the ability to visualize and immediately share the storyboard was creatively freeing," Scorsese said in a statement.

He added that the process let the team move faster without sacrificing quality.

Industry reaction Some members of the film industry objected to the endorsement.

Karla Ortiz, who worked in the art department on films including Avengers: Endgame, wrote on X that the move threatened storyboard artists' livelihoods. Animation director Samuel Deats said there was no need for AI trained on artists' work when storyboarding a shot takes seconds by hand.

Other social media users defended the use of the technology, comparing it to earlier tools such as CGI and 3D filming that Scorsese has previously employed. Scorsese noted that cinema is roughly 125 years old and said filmmakers should remain open to how the medium can evolve.

He cited his earlier use of 3D in the 2011 film Hugo and de-ageing technology in the 2019 film The Irishman.