The future of filmmaking is being defined by a new kind of creative partnership: artists experimenting with artificial intelligence, iterating and bringing ambitious visions to life.
For the past year, Google has been working side-by-side with filmmakers to explore ways to advance and improve artistic processes with generative AI. But we also heard a clear message: For AI to truly empower, it must be community-driven leadership and supported by accessible education. Currently, most media companies feel overwhelmed by the pace of AI change, and only 25% of media companies are currently investing in training.
To help, Google.org is providing $2 million in funding to the Sundance Institute to build a community-led ecosystem for AI education and empowerment. The funding will help bridge the AI ​​skills gap by training over 100,000 artists in basic AI skills and democratizing access to AI learning for filmmakers. This effort is part of Google.org’s AI Opportunity Fund, an initiative that helps Americans develop essential AI skills by funding best-in-class workforce development and training organizations across critical segments of society.
A reliable ecosystem for teaching artificial filmmaking
By supporting the Sundance Institute’s AI training efforts, Google.org is enabling a community-driven ecosystem that focuses on:
- Building the storytelling hubs of the future: The Sundance Institute will establish an AI Literacy Alliance initiative in partnership with The Gotham and Film Independent. This initiative will strengthen artist communities by providing training and support to establish values ​​and ethics that protect human creativity, artists and the creative industry as a whole.
- Turn big ideas into technical skills: The Sundance Institute and alliance partners will develop a free online curriculum to help bridge the gap between creative curiosity and effective technical use. This will include scholarships for Google courses such as AI Essentials.
- Promote artist learning and development of standards: The Sundance Institute will launch an AI Creators Fellowship for technical experiments and host community conversations to develop joint case studies, reports and industry-led standards.
A year of collaborative innovation
For the past year, we have invited filmmakers to our labs to co-create new tools and inform about the technical requirements for our generative models based on the practical, rigorous standards of filmmaking craft. Today’s announcement from Google.org is the natural evolution of our “collaboration-first” approach, building on recent initiatives such as:
- Flow: Built with creative, for creative: We gave storytellers early access to Flow, our AI filmmaking tool. Their hands-on feedback helped us shape an interface that today serves as a place for artists to explore and iterate on cinematic ideas. Through our Flow Sessions program, we continue to work closely with a group of creatives—providing them with mentorship, AI training, and unlimited access to the tool as they work to create short films of all types.
- AI on screen: In collaboration with Range Media Partners, we launched this short film program to explore our evolving relationship with technology through the creation of films about AI, not made with AI. The program’s first film, Sweetwater, explores the poignant concept of digitally preserving a loved one’s memory.
- Ancient soup: Our partnership with Darren Aronofsky’s Primordial Soup on the film Ancestry forced our generative models to solve real production obstacles. To meet director Eliza McNitt’s vision, we developed advanced features like personalized video for character consistency and motion matching to replicate complex 3D camera paths.
Today’s independent filmmakers are at the center of a fundamental shift. But tools do nothing by themselves; it is the human imagination that gives them purpose. The goal is no longer just to learn a new tool, but to realize the creative potential that AI opens up for their specific vision. Across our ongoing collaborations and investments in community-led education, we are committed to ensuring that the future of film remains firmly in the hands of storytellers.
We’re now on our way to Park City, if you’re attending, come check out our deep dive session in Flow or the Sundance Institute Story Forum, where we’ll be previewing “Dear Upstairs Neighbors,” showing how customized Google DeepMind models help artists transform handmade art into “living paintings” while maintaining total creative control.