Two things happened in Hollywood this year that don’t quite fit together — and that tension is exactly the point.
At SXSW in March, Steven Spielberg stood in front of an audience and said he has never used artificial intelligence in any of his films. The room erupted. Meanwhile, Netflix was weeks away from spending up to $600 million acquiring an AI filmmaking startup. Both things are true. Both represent Hollywood right now.
The AI debate has been swirling since the 2023 strikes — but in 2026, it has stopped being theoretical. The jobs are disappearing. The acquisitions are happening. The sides are hardening. And the question of what AI actually means for the films and shows audiences watch is no longer something the industry can defer.
The Jobs Picture Is Already Changing
Start with the numbers, because they’re hard to ignore. 41,000 jobs in film and television have disappeared in Los Angeles County alone over the past three years. A broader report released in April 2026 found that California’s creative economy lost 14% of its jobs between 2022 and 2025 — roughly 114,000 roles — with film, television, and sound seeing a nearly 30% decline.
The report’s authors note that rather than AI being the primary driver, the losses stem from “a combination of cost-driven displacement of lower-paying roles and structural changes within creative sectors” — the aftermath of streaming restructuring, mergers, and post-strike budget tightening. But that’s cold comfort for the people who lost those jobs, and it doesn’t mean AI’s role stays small. The Animation Guild’s 2024 report warned that by 2026, creative workers would be facing “an era of disruption, defined by the consolidation of some job roles, the replacement of existing job roles with new ones, and the elimination of many jobs entirely.” That era has arrived.
Rick Lyman, TV and film industry consultant, notes that the job loss story and the AI story are running on parallel tracks right now — and they’re about to intersect more directly.
Netflix Just Made Its Position Very Clear
While Spielberg was drawing his line in the sand, Netflix was quietly acquiring InterPositive — an AI filmmaking startup founded by Ben Affleck — for up to $600 million. The deal is one of the most significant AI-related acquisitions any major studio or streamer has made.
InterPositive’s technology requires an initial film shoot to train its software on the footage, after which it can assist with tasks like removing unwanted objects or changing scene backgrounds. Netflix framed it as a tool to empower filmmakers. Patent documents reviewed by Deadline tell a slightly different story — the company’s own filings projected “substantial” below-the-line production savings of at least 10–20%, with specific departments like art direction and set dressing projected to see cost reductions of up to 40%.
Netflix isn’t alone. Amazon has established an internal group to implement AI in its film and television projects, while Disney has entered a commercial agreement with OpenAI. Studios aren’t deciding whether to use AI or not…they’re deciding how fast to implement it.
The Spielberg Argument
At SXSW, Spielberg was direct: “I am not for AI if it replaces a creative individual.” He argued that writers developing scripts, actors bringing characters to life, and directors shaping stories through instinct and experience represent the irreplaceable heart of filmmaking — and that removing that human collaboration would fundamentally change what movies are.
It would be easy to dismiss this as an established filmmaker protecting the world he built. But the argument cuts deeper than sentiment. One industry insider, writing in The Hollywood Reporter, put it plainly: prestige filmmaking will stay largely human-governed — not out of craft pride, but because audiences will pay more for it. The concern isn’t that AI takes over everything. It’s that it takes over the middle — the mid-budget dramas, the genre films, the animation — while prestige projects remain untouched and everything underneath hollows out.
Rick Lyman points out this is precisely the bifurcation worth watching: a high-end creative tier that retains human authorship, and a volume tier that becomes increasingly machine-assisted, with the workers who populated that middle ground having nowhere to go.
So What Does This Mean for the Films You Watch?
Probably not what you’d expect — at least not immediately. The visible craft of filmmaking, the performances, the direction, the storytelling, is not about to be replaced wholesale. What changes first is the invisible infrastructure: background elements, VFX clean-up, dubbing and localisation, rough cuts, scene generation for pre-visualisation. Work that audiences never see directly but that employs thousands of people.
The conversation happening at Cannes this month and at festivals across the industry isn’t really about whether AI belongs in filmmaking. It’s about who controls it, who benefits from the cost savings it generates, and whether those savings translate into more films being made or simply into higher profit margins.
Spielberg drew a line. Netflix wrote a cheque. Both moves tell you something real about where Hollywood is headed — and the gap between them is where the industry’s most important argument is currently being fought.
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