Worries about Hollywood assistants and AI

Industry observers fear the encroachment of generative innovation. AI You can also expect Tilly Norwood to appear in the next game. Fast and Furious Movies and AI-generated screenplays are blacklisted. However, the reality of this kind of AI taking over Hollywood is hampered by a variety of barriers to entry, including labor contracts, ongoing copyright issues, and current consumer interest.

The reality of how AI is currently being integrated into the largest swaths of the entertainment industry is much more prosaic. And just as new technologies have been introduced to Hollywood before, from digital movies to email, AI is creeping in from the bottom up, starting with the assistant class, and is on track to become the industry standard as today’s subordinates (i.e. those who have survived constant layoffs) rise to positions of power.

Faced with larger workloads and reduced headcount, AI (both the kind officially endorsed by companies and its more surprising uses) has found its way into essential Hollywood workflows, including the creative development process through support staff.

The Hollywood Reporter We spoke to a dozen assistants and support staff from studios, networks and agencies. They all requested anonymity, citing job security and the difficult Hollywood labor market. They described how AI is used routinely and consistently for small problems (writing thank-you notes to fit a Beverly Hills florist’s 250-character limit) and larger problems (using an AI note-taker in studio meetings with the creators behind a streaming series).

A partner at a large Hollywood management firm does not allow support staff or managers to use AI, saying, “I prefer independent thinking.” Still, other entertainment companies are more optimistic about integrating AI into their daily operations, with some even asking employees to track their use of AI. This is a more common practice at tech companies like Meta and Google. In January disney We hosted an internal AI summit with representatives from all departments to drive integration of AI use across the company’s entire business, from Imagineering to business operations and beyond. (This all happened just months before the studio’s $1 billion AI investment in OpenAI expired. company sora video app.)

Like office workers around the world, Hollywood support staff are turning to AI for pedestrian, unobtrusive tasks like writing emails, preparing for meetings, and finding ways to handle the constant flow of obligatory congratulations and holiday gifts. “You don’t have to spend two hours of your day trying to figure out how to deliver a bottle of wine to someone in the middle of nowhere,” says one assistant.

And it can be applied to more Hollywood-specific support staff tasks, including sensitive information handling and creative workflows.

“This is not a tool built on the nuances of our industry,” says Warner Bailey, a one-time Hollywood assistant who created a popular social media meme page and then turned media company Assistants vs. Agents. Bailey has long been surveying thousands of strong support staff about how they do their jobs, including how they use (or misuse) AI. “Many assistants are now pasting sensitive information, including customer schedules, deal terms, internal notes and data, into public AI tools,” he says.

Bailey said the problem is the use of “shadow AI” – that is, the use of free or publicly available AI tools without corporate approval or security oversight and not from corporate or business accounts. Bailey, who is building a management automation platform for use by current and next-generation entertainment professionals, points out that there is little to no training provided to assistants in the use of AI. And Hollywood’s young assistant workforce, most of whom are now Gen Z, have been using GenAI and LLM for years in school and in their personal lives and are bringing some of these habits into the workplace.

“The training part should be left up to the company, but unfortunately, due to various factors such as shrinking budgets and knowledge base, it has to be taken out of the equation,” says Bailey. “Internally, the (management) systems are so outdated that even people in senior positions or who were assistants two or three years ago don’t necessarily have the knowledge to train others.”

Some support staff are using AI to keep up with the biggest perennial segment of the Hollywood assistant world: coverage. Reporting is the foundation of the Hollywood development process and is the first step in telling a story from page to screen. To obtain industry-standard development reports on the content and quality of scripts, books, short stories, etc., readers have uploaded PDFs of various written materials, including unpublished works, to the following sites: ChatGPTCreate summaries using Claude and other tools.

However, LLMs are built to ingest and synthesize text, often leaving out subtleties such as nuance, irony, and other important (read: human) aspects of storytelling. They also tend to introduce descriptive inaccuracies. Industry veterans say this results in a lack of AI support coverage.

“AI can’t encapsulate emotion. It can’t define whether a character is original,” says Stephen Galloway, dean and former dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. neck Editor) spent five years as a script reader for reporting.

Chapman’s film school has five AI-related classes for students, and Galloway points out that AI is a useful tool, but “there are two imperatives: one is to master the tool, but to know what you can do independent of the tool.”

Many people spoke to me neck Think of AI use as more of a necessity than a preference. As budgets and headcount continue to be cut, culling comes from the bottom, and assistants are forced to support not just one, but sometimes two or three superiors. (In a 2025 survey of over 100 CEOs and executives, from neck’s annual Next Gen listHalf said they shared an assistant or did not have one at all.)

One of the biggest concerns when using GenAI tools is neck It’s about the environmental impacts of tidal energy-consuming technologies. Another biggest concern is job security.

“When you say, ‘We have to use AI,’ my first thought is, ‘Are you telling me to teach you how to replace me with technology?’” says one studio assistant.

The use of AI by Hollywood’s underclass dovetails with the larger existential anxieties that plague up-and-comers. As assistants increasingly find themselves needing AI to keep up with their workloads, those same skills may be preventing them from building a solid skill set needed to move up in the industry.

“I can’t help but think that way. We’ll rationalize, but then just give me two more bosses and we’ll be back where we started. Instead of hiring two assistants, I’ll hire one and I’ll still be swamped with administrative work,” the assistant adds. “And it doesn’t get you any closer to a promotion.”

Galloway says AI currently poses less of a threat to the assistant workforce than the typical downsizing and consolidation affecting the industry. He points out that assistant salaries have stayed roughly the same over the past decade as cost cutting has led to fewer entry-level jobs and the cost of living has increased significantly in Los Angeles.

Hollywood is an industry built on an apprenticeship model, starting with time spent as an assistant (or, in previous generations, in the mailroom). But Galloway says, “The industry is actually shrinking. When the industry is shrinking and things change, it creates a climate of panic and people can’t afford to be cared for and cared for. Survival comes first. This is damaging to the ladder of lasting relationships.”

This story appears in The Hollywood Reporter’s The upcoming AI issue is scheduled to come out in April.