Martin Scorsese Partners with AI Image Startup Black Forest Labs
Director to use AI solely for storyboarding, signaling Hollywood's softening stance on AI.
Quick Look
- Martin Scorsese has joined AI image startup Black Forest Labs as a partner and advisor, using their technology exclusively for storyboarding.
- The German-based company powers features for Adobe, Canva, Microsoft, and Meta, and its partnership with Scorsese signals Hollywood's evolving relationship with AI.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Martin Scorsese, a renowned filmmaker, has partnered with Black Forest Labs, an AI image-generation startup. The company, based in Germany, powers image features for major tech firms like Adobe and Microsoft. This move comes amid Hollywood's evolving stance on AI.
Martin Scorsese has signed on as a partner and adviser to an AI image-generation startup Black Forest Labs, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.
The caveat is that one of the world’s most famous living directors is using the tech solely for storyboarding.
“For 70 years, I’ve been creating my own storyboards,” he said in a statement to the Times. The tool, he said, helps him communicate his vision to cinematographers and production designers far faster and more efficiently.
Black Forest Labs is a 70-person outfit headquartered not in San Francisco, but in Freiburg, Germany, the closest major city to the actual Black Forest. Despite its unlikely address, the startup powers image features inside Adobe, Canva, Microsoft, and Meta, and was last valued at $3.25 billion by its investors, which include BroadLight Capital, co-founded by Scorsese’s talent manager, Rick Yorn.
Black Forest Labs was founded by the team behind Stable Diffusion and according to Wired, declined to partner with Elon Musk’s xAI in recent months — the second time after an earlier collaboration on Grok’s image generator ended amid concerns about the platform’s content safeguards.
All of which is to say that Scorsese’s endorsement, though limited in scope, is just the newest sign that Hollywood’s once-fierce resistance to AI is softening, whether the industry likes it or not.
What to Watch
AI outlook — possibilities, not facts
Other major film directors may explore partnerships with AI companies for specific production tasks.
Possible · Within months
Black Forest Labs will see increased investment and partnerships following this high-profile endorsement.
Likely · Within months
Open Questions
- What specific AI tools will Scorsese use for storyboarding?
- Will this partnership influence other filmmakers to adopt AI?
- What are Black Forest Labs' future plans for its AI technology?
- How will this impact the traditional roles of storyboard artists?
