In response to Martin Scorsese partnering with AI startup Black Forest Labs, the Art Directors Guild has issued a statement slamming the filmmaker for “turning his back on the human artists who throughout his career have helped him create his most memorable works.”
Last Tuesday, Scorsese announced an advisor role with Black Forest Labs, appearing in an ad for the company’s FLUX storyboarding tool. Scorsese touted the program’s “cinematic intelligence,” which the Art Directors Guild Local 800 has now criticized for being built on “ingesting large swaths of copyrighted work, likely scraped from the internet without consent, credit, compensation, or transparency.”
The ADG represents storyboard artists as well as concept artists, set designers, production designers, and other illustrators and graphic artists who work in the film industry. The union’s membership is particularly at risk from generative AI, with a 2024 study commissioned by the Animation Guild and The Concept Art Association pointing to “a lot of role consolidation and reduction” following Hollywood’s swift adoption of the new technology.
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In their statement, the ADG said Scorsese’s endorsement of Black Forest Labs “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.” The statement continued, “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.”
For his part, Scorsese has said that “cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve.” The filmmaker has long done much of his storyboarding himself, and said he “recently tested [FLUX] out on a scene, and the ability to visualize and immediately share the storyboard was creatively freeing. During the preproduction process, time costs money, and this allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft.”
Read the Art Directors Guild’s full statement below.
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… pic.twitter.com/7vyqOVGWOZ
— Art Directors Guild (@ADG800) June 9, 2026
