As Hollywood wrestles with how to reconcile AI and the creative process, new research offers a look at how some in the industry are actually using the tech.
The findings, published October 8, come from the Mozilla Foundation and think-tank the Berggruen Institute. They offer a rare snapshot, albeit based on a limited sample size, of how people in Hollywood are using AI.
The research came out of discussions with 174 people working in creative fields over three months in early 2025. The largest group (43%) consisted of TV and film producers, directors, and similar professionals. Others represented music, marketing, and technology roles in Hollywood.
The most popular use (19.35%) was performing tasks such as brainstorming ideas and receiving feedback on story concepts.
As one producer said in the report: “I love being able to bounce ideas off the AI like I do my other writer colleagues.”
“I feed it my ideas and it generates a version that is more digestible and concrete,” another said.
Other prominent applications of AI were using it to gain efficiency (17.74%) and having it help with research-related work (11.29%).
“It helps me summarize and think quickly. It’s definitely offloaded some of my creative thinking by breaking through writer’s block,” one study participant said.
Others described using AI to speed up research, make presentations, clean up texts and translations, and generate reference images.
About 8% said they used AI in every step of their creative process, from organizing their workflow and schedule to answering emails and writing scripts.
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That said, a substantial share (19.35%) reported that AI had a minimal effect on their work.
Overall, the research found people working at the heart of the business — in TV and film — lag their tech colleagues in using AI. More than 81% of respondents working in tech roles said they used AI, about double the number of people in film, TV, music, and other areas. (Tech people in this case were AI and tech builders, engineers, technologists, and others.)
Across Hollywood, the major studios are utilizing AI to different degrees as they strive to do more with less and catch up to the tech giants. AI startups, including Runway and Moonvalley, have made inroads. Entertainment giants like Netflix and Lionsgate are variously exploring using the tech to make previews, generate shots, and aid in licensing. Some prominent directors are experimenting with AI, like Darren Aronofsky, who partnered with Google’s DeepMind to make short films using Google tools.
Morgan Stanley predicted that TV and film production companies could reduce their costs by as much as 30% by applying AI to activities such as script writing, production, editing, sound mixing, and visual effects. But there’s resistance in the creative areas where people worry AI will take jobs and degrade the quality of the work.
Hollywood is also trying to protect its copyrighted IP as AI startups race ahead with new tools. Disney and NBCUniversal sued the AI company Midjourney in June, for example.
Using AI doesn’t mean creative professionals are happy about it.
When it came to AI’s impact, 75% of technologists and 67.39% of creatives expressed concern about the impact of AI on economic opportunities. A similar share — 75% of technologists and 63% of creatives — said they didn’t feel like institutions had their back in protecting their creative rights.
