The “Casino” director is working as an “advisor” to the AI company Black Forest Labs, and is experimenting with how to use the company’s tech to generate storyboards.

Martin Scorsese endorses AI in filmmaking: ‘We have to be open to how it can evolve’

The "Casino" director is working as an "advisor" to the AI company Black Forest Labs, and is experimenting with how to use the company's tech to generate storyboards.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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June 2, 2026 3:47 p.m. ET

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Martin Scorsese in New York City on Nov. 1, 2025. Credit:

TheStewartofNY/FilmMagic

- Martin Scorsese publicly endorsed the AI company Black Forest Labs.

- The filmmaker appeared in a video in which he used the company's tech to generate storyboards.

- "Remember, cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve," he said.

The pro-AI faction of Hollywood has gained a powerful ally.

Martin Scorsese has officially endorsed Black Forest Labs, an AI company specializing in "visual intelligence" via its FLUX image generator.

The company announced Tuesday that Scorsese would be "helping us shape visual intelligence as an advisor" in a promotion on its website.

The *Killers of the Flower Moon* director released a statement explaining that he planned to use AI tools in his storyboarding process during preproduction.

"For 70 years, I’ve been creating my own storyboards," Scorsese said. "There’s always been this problem of how do you communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew. There are some things you have to see and feel. I’m interested in the intersection of technology and storytelling, and seeing how that can push the bounds of creativity to create deeper and richer experiences for audiences."

Martin Scorsese in New York City on June 6, 2025.

Dominik Bindl/Getty

The *Goodfellas* filmmaker went on to note that he has embraced new technologies throughout his career. "Remember, cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve," he said. "I utilized 3D with *Hugo* and de-aging technology for *The Irishman*. Now, with this tool, I can share what I’m visualizing more clearly and efficiently to my creative team — the production designer, art designer, and cinematographer — for them to build on to enrich cinematic intelligence."

Scorsese also said that he "recently tested this out on a scene," and claimed that "the ability to visualize and immediately share the storyboard was creatively freeing."

He added, "During the pre-production process, time costs money, and this allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft."

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Scorsese is currently shooting an adaptation of Peter Cameron's gothic mystery novel *What Happens at Night* starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. The filmmaker appeared in a promotional video that showed him using Black Forest Labs technology to conjure up a still image of a wintry European town that appears consistent with the first look at the film.

"There's always been that problem of what you see in here," Scorsese says in the video while gesturing to his head. "How do you get it there? How do you get it onto set? How do you get it through the weather, [or] even on a soundstage? How do you get it? How do you create what you have in your thought, in your mind's eye? It's almost like a painter -– how does he or she get that from here onto the canvas?"

Scorsese then dictates a description of a haggard Eastern European cab driver, which appears on the screen in front of him.

"Almost the ideal would almost be to make a film in your private room, in a way. And you create the picture, in a sense," he says. "And it's finally translated to 50 people on the crew, 100 people on the crew. And it becomes alive. But you do have that control of making the film, rather than doing it solely through verbal language. You know, this conveys a cinematic intelligence, not necessarily painting, not necessarily literature. It's cinema. That's the great thing about this tool."

Martin Scorsese in New York City on Jan. 25, 2025.

Mike Coppola/Getty

*The New York Times* reported that Scorsese became connected to Black Forest Labs via Broadlight Capital, a group founded by the filmmaker's talent manager Rick Yorn.

Scorsese's embrace of AI technology comes as a surprise to some, as the *Taxi Driver *filmmaker has long been a champion of highbrow cinema. He previously founded the World Cinema Foundation to promote international film voices, helmed multiple documentaries about film history, and has publicly decried Marvel movies on more than one occasion.

The use of AI tools in Hollywood filmmaking has been a controversial topic as the technology has rapidly infiltrated other industries over the past several years. Guillermo del Toro said that he'd "rather die" than use generative AI, while *Breaking Bad* creator Vince Gilligan opined that the tech is "a lot of horses---" and "a giant plagiarism machine."

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Other filmmakers have publicly embraced AI, including Steven Soderbergh, who used gen-AI imagery in a new documentary about John Lennon, and Brady Corbet, who utilized AI tools to edit Hungarian dialogue in *The Brutalist*. Reese Witherspoon, Demi Moore, and Sandra Bullock have all suggested that the technology's adoption in the entertainment industry is inevitable.

Others still have taken more nuanced stances on the technology. Steven Spielberg recently said that AI could hypothetically be useful for filmmaking processes like location scouting, but ultimately said that filmmakers should only "use AI as a tool, but do not use AI as the final word on anything creative." And Ron Howard said that "it’ll be helpful in terms of visual effects and be its own kind of revolution," but argued that "the important thing for us as a society is to preserve creative populations’ ability to make a living."

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