Legendary Hollywood director and filmmaker Martin Scorsese has been condemned following the announcement of his AI company investment used to create storyboards for films.

The Oscar-winning director was recently unveiled as a partner and adviser to Black Forest Labs, a Germany-based artificial intelligence company specialising in text-to-image generation, a move that has sparked criticism from storyboard and concept artists across the film industry.

Speaking on his decision, Scorsese defended the technology, saying it offers a new way to communicate creative ideas during production.

“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,” he said.

“Remember, cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve.”

Scorsese stated that after decades of creating storyboards by hand, the technology now allows him to share visual concepts more efficiently with cast and crew.

“For 70 years, I’ve been creating my own storyboards. There’s always been this problem of how do you communicate what you see in your head to your cast and crew,” he said.

“Now with this tool, I can share what I’m visualising more clearly and efficiently to my creative team.”

Despite the controversy, Scorsese said that there were zero plans to use AI-generated images in his films, adding that the tool was solely being used in pre-production to speed up visual planning without affecting quality.

“I recently tested this out on a scene, and the ability to visualise and immediately share the storyboard was creatively freeing,” he said.

Scorsese’s comments come just weeks after Disney laid off about 1,000 employees across its operations, including visual development artists at Marvel Studios, raising concerns over the growing use of AI tools which will threaten years of work, expertise and livelihoods of creative professionals

Concept artist Karla Ortiz, known for her work on several of Marvel’s box-office hits including Black Panther, Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War, condemned the move. 

She said via her X handle, “He throws every single storyboard artist he’s ever worked with under the bus, as he demolishes their livelihoods with models that are likely trained on those storyboard artists’ own works. To use his legacy and power for this is just so disgusting.”

The Director of Netflix’s animated television series Castlevania Samuel Deats criticised Scorsese’s endorsement stating that, “There is absolutely no reason to need AI built on the stolen work of millions of artists to storyboard your vision.”