Martin Scorsese has become one of the most high-profile Hollywood directors to publicly embrace artificial intelligence, announcing a partnership with AI company Black Forest Labs that will allow him to use the technology to create storyboards.
The 82-year-old Oscar winner will serve as an advisor to the research lab and has already begun testing its FLUX image generation technology during pre-production.
In a statement released Tuesday, Scorsese framed his interest in AI not as a departure from his values as a filmmaker, but as a continuation of his long-standing engagement with new tools.
“For 70 years, I’ve been creating my own storyboards. There’s always been this problem of how to communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew,” he said.
“There are certain things that need to be seen and felt. I’m interested in the intersection of technology and storytelling, and seeing how that can push the boundaries of creativity to create deeper, richer experiences for audiences. Remember, cinema is a young medium, only about 125 years old, so we need to be open to how it can evolve.”
He drew a direct line between this approach and his previous technological experiments, the use of 3D in Hugo and aging technology in The Irishman.
For Scorsese, the appeal of AI storyboarding is fundamentally practical.
“Now, with this tool, I can share what I visualize more clearly and effectively with my creative team, the production designer, art designer and cinematographer, so they can rely on them to enrich the cinematic intelligence,” he said.
“During the pre-production process, time costs money, which has allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craftsmanship.”
He also highlighted what technology means to the people around him: “If you had a tool like this, you could understand it a lot faster and you could save production time, as well as less wear and tear on the team.”
The announcement places Scorsese alongside James Cameron, who joined the board of AI company Stability AI last September, as one of Hollywood’s most prominent voices ready to engage with the technology rather than resist it.
