As artists protest and studios sue in their war against artificial intelligence, the entertainment industry’s dependence on it increases.
Although few places are better at crafting a narrative and hiding what’s happening offscreen than Hollywood, a Los Angeles Times job posting survey sheds light on what’s happening offstage.
Among hundreds of job postings at the end of June, more than one in ten were probably connected to AI. The top studios’ public posts suggest they have recruited people to develop AI tools. They are also recruiting teams to defend their intellectual property against unauthorized AI use.
“There are a lot of studios that are hiring [for AI] But never talk about it publicly,” said Yoland Yan, co-founder of ComfyUI, a company that helps studios juggle various AI tools.
Companies were hesitant to detail how they use generative AI in film production, in part because they worried about backlash from consumers and unions.
The Walt Disney Studios complex on May 3 in Burbank.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Some in Hollywood described the use of AI as the new plastic surgery that everyone knows is happening, but few will admit it.
Recent job postings show Amazon MGM Studios trying to find a senior AI manager and Walt Disney Studios applying for a production innovation technologist position.
“What you see in these job postings is that adoption is already happening,” said Bryn Mooser, chief executive of Asteria, an AI film studio.
Netflix recently posted a job that didn’t exist a year ago.
The streamer was looking for a position as a “generative workflow manager,” a position that would help integrate more AI into Netflix films. It promised hands-on experience with cutting-edge technology.
“The industry is flooded with speculative GenAI roadmaps, but few have been proven in production,” the post said, referring to generative AI. The post states that the role will work to introduce AI to the Netflix films released in the US and Canada.
While some companies may be shy about sharing their AI plans, big stars who don’t have to answer to others are more open about embracing the new storytelling technology.
An exterior view of the Netflix sign at Netflix on Vine in Hollywood in 2025.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Rejecting AI is like choosing a horse and carriage over a car, said “Star Wars” creator George Lucas.
“Artificial intelligence makes it much easier for us to make films,” he told a trade magazine earlier this year. “There’s nothing you can do about it. This is progress. This is the future.”
Some in Hollywood have taken a softer stance on artificial intelligence, with studios signing deals with AI companies and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese supporting AI companies.
Ben Affleck founded an AI film technology company and then sold it to Netflix for half a billion dollars.
When launching InterPositive, Affleck said he wanted to continue doing “human storytelling” by developing AI tools that correct lighting, generate missing shots and other things while “keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists.”
The Times’ survey found that two senior positions at InterPositive should update programming to apply AI to visual effects.
Culver Studios on February 12th in Culver City.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
To gauge what’s going on behind the scenes, The Times created a scraper using Claude Code to identify job postings at Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony, Netflix and Amazon MGM. Around 250 job advertisements from film studios were found that were still public at the end of June. About 30 of them appeared to be related to AI.
Disney, Netflix and Amazon had job postings that discussed the use of AI in the creative side of the company. Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros. and Sony had job advertisements indicating that they also use AI, but for marketing, sales and audience analysis.
According to the posts, Disney, Netflix and Amazon studios are developing repeatable AI workflows for visual effects, animation, sound and dubbing. The companies also appear to be building internal teams to develop custom generative AI models, also using third-party software.
None of the advertised jobs involved developing AI that writes scripts or creating AI actors.
Disney’s 10 or so AI jobs showed the century-old studio expanding its AI research and production capabilities while protecting its treasure trove of beloved characters.
Mouse House is hiring graduate students to study “computer graphics and AI” for Pixar and Disney films, people designed to “bridge the gap between research and practical studio application.”
Industrial Light & Magic, the Disney-owned visual effects shop, was looking for supervisors to “explore new technologies (including AI/machine learning)” to develop new production workflows.
The company’s audio post-production unit, Skywalker Sound, was apparently looking for people to develop proprietary AI models for soundtracks, voice separation and voice delivery, the process of capturing a speaker’s tone and pitch and applying them to new content.
Disney also hired people to defend itself. Three of his tasks were related to “content security” to evaluate and protect AI tools from piracy, watermarking and rights protection work.
The company’s public stance so far has been to pursue lawsuits against AI companies for inappropriate use of copyrighted material, and it backed away from its plans to invest $1 billion in an equity investment deal with OpenAI.
Netflix’s posts suggested that the company is bringing more AI into the creative side of its business.
Girish Balakrishnan, senior director of creative innovation at Netflix, explained at the Runway AI Film Festival how AI was used to create soccer fans in “Brazil ’70” and create footage for fight scenes in “Glory.”
Amazon, an early adopter, hired a senior AI manager to drive adoption of AI tools across manufacturing, as well as roles in operations automation and LLM content classification, the listings show.
The Seattle-based streamer has been the studio’s most aggressive AI adopter, commissioning three AI animated series through its GenAI Creator fund in May. Amazon has also funded a Manhattan Beach manufacturing services company, Innovative Dream.
Even as studios build larger AI teams, many in the industry are resisting, and some film fans are worried.
Actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA ratified a new four-year contract in June with special protections against synthetic performers, and the union backed a national bill to protect individuals from unauthorized AI-generated digital replicas.
Since 2023, the studios have met with the union twice a year to provide a confidential report on their AI-related activities. The studios are telling the union that they are not yet using AI that would completely replace humans, a person familiar with the discussions said.
The union says there is no evidence that generative AI is being used to create performances and that studios should notify the union if this happens.
Actors, writers, production staff and film fans still balk at the excessive use of AI and defining when and where it is acceptable, so studios are proceeding cautiously, said Mooser, CEO of the AI Film Studio.
“It’s been really challenging to adopt it both socially and ethically and legally, but we’re seeing more acceptance than ever before,” he said.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-07-26/hollywoods-ai-hiring-is-real-inside-studios-hiring-tells-more-careful-story
