The New Gatekeepers: Who Really Owns AI in Cinema?
From Hollywood to Silicon Valley
For a century, Hollywood studios were the gatekeepers of film. They controlled funding, distribution, and, by extension, the stories that reached audiences. Today, AI threatens to shift that power — not just changing how films are made, but who decides what gets made at all.
The tools that promise to “democratize filmmaking” aren’t neutral. They’re built, trained, and owned by tech giants. That means the future of cinema might not be decided on a soundstage in Los Angeles, but in a server farm in San Francisco.
The Myth of Neutral Tools
AI is often marketed as objective, as if algorithms simply “reflect data.” But every dataset has bias, every model has limitations, and every tool reflects the priorities of those who built it.
Which stories are overrepresented in the training data? Likely Western, commercial, and mainstream.
Which stories are underrepresented? Independent, indigenous, and culturally specific.
Who profits from the tools? Not the filmmakers, but the corporations licensing access.
In this sense, AI doesn’t just shape aesthetics. It shapes the very boundaries of what stories are possible.
From Creativity to Compliance
At Fragrant Film, we see a danger that’s bigger than AI replacing jobs: the risk of AI redefining the terms of creativity itself.
Instead of asking, What story do I want to tell? filmmakers may ask, What story will the algorithm greenlight?
Instead of What risks should we take? the question becomes, What’s safe enough to pass AI testing?
Instead of independent vision, we get algorithmic compliance.
And when compliance replaces vision, cinema loses its edge.
The Bigger Question
The real issue isn’t whether AI can write scripts or edit films. It’s who owns the means of creation.
If Hollywood was once accused of gatekeeping, what happens when the new gatekeepers aren’t even storytellers, but engineers, data scientists, and shareholders of trillion-dollar tech firms?
The Future of Resistance
Filmmakers have always found ways to push against the system — from indie movements to guerrilla filmmaking. The challenge of this era will be pushing against not just studios, but platforms and algorithms.
Cinema’s future may depend on filmmakers asking harder questions:
Who built this AI?
What worldview does it carry?
Whose stories does it silence?
Because in the end, the danger isn’t that AI will replace filmmakers. The danger is that AI will decide which filmmakers matter.
