Midjourney Is Asking Hollywood to Come Clean About How It Uses AI

Midjourney has made an unusual move: the AI image generation company is asking Hollywood studios to publicly disclose how they are using AI in their productions. The demand for transparency is notable for several reasons, not least because Midjourney itself has faced significant criticism from artists over its own use of their work to train its models without explicit consent. But the request cuts to a real tension that has been simmering in the film and television industry for the past two years.

The specifics of Midjourney's ask are still emerging, but the company reportedly wants studios to be forthcoming about which AI tools are being used, at which stages of production, and for what purposes. That would include visual effects work, concept art generation, background creation, script analysis tools, and the use of AI for de-ageing actors or recreating the likeness of performers who are no longer alive.

Why Studios Have Been Reluctant to Disclose

Hollywood has a transparency problem when it comes to AI, and it is not hard to understand why. The Screen Actors Guild and other unions negotiated hard-fought protections around AI use in their 2023 contracts after a lengthy strike. Studios agreed to notify and seek consent from performers before using their digital likenesses, and to disclose when AI was used in ways that might affect union members' jobs or earnings.

In practice, compliance with those provisions has been inconsistent, and enforcement has proven difficult. Identifying exactly when and how AI was used in a finished production requires either self-reporting from the studios or intensive third-party auditing. Studios have little financial incentive to be more transparent than contractually required, particularly when AI use can reduce costs on visual effects work that would otherwise go to unionised crew members.

The stakes are also reputational. Several films have faced significant audience backlash when their use of AI-generated imagery became public, even when that use was relatively minor. Studios are understandably cautious about proactively inviting scrutiny.

What Midjourney's Angle Actually Is

Midjourney's motivations here are worth examining. The company is a major commercial beneficiary of the Hollywood content pipeline. Studios, production companies, and individual creators all use Midjourney's tools extensively for concept art, storyboarding, and visual development. Advocating for disclosure of AI use by studios is, in part, advocacy for normalising and legitimising AI tools in professional creative production.

There is also a defensive logic. If Hollywood's AI use remains opaque, it is easier for critics to characterise the entire technology as illegitimate or harmful. Greater transparency, even if it reveals uncomfortable truths about job displacement, at least moves the conversation into the open where it can be addressed through policy and negotiation rather than suspicion and backlash.

For audiences, greater transparency would be genuinely valuable. Viewers arguably have a right to know when a deceased actor's likeness has been recreated digitally, or when what appears to be a practical effect is actually AI-generated imagery. Several major jurisdictions, including the European Union, are beginning to require disclosure of AI-generated content in certain contexts. Hollywood is likely to face mandatory disclosure requirements eventually regardless of whether studios choose voluntary transparency now.

The creative community's response to Midjourney's call is likely to be mixed. Many working artists and visual effects professionals will welcome any pressure that forces studios to be more accountable. Others will be sceptical of a company that profited from training on artists' work without consent suddenly positioning itself as an advocate for transparency in the industry it disrupted.

That scepticism is fair. But the underlying demand, that studios be honest about how AI is reshaping one of the world's most prominent creative industries, is a reasonable one regardless of who is making it. The conversation about AI in Hollywood has been shaped too long by PR strategy and legal caution. Some actual data about what is happening on real productions would be a welcome change.