Actor Tori Thomas on set at the AI studio Promise in Los Angeles filming the studio’s newly announced AI-enabled horror film, Touch Grass. Photograph: Alex Welsh/The Guardian View image in fullscreen Actor Tori Thomas on set at the AI studio Promise in Los Angeles filming the studio’s newly announced AI-enabled horror film, Touch Grass. Photograph: Alex Welsh/The Guardian Film industry ‘I see the incredible promise’: on set of an AI film shoot as new studios embrace controversial tech Amid fears for jobs, some film-makers say AI could enable them bypass studio giants and take more creative risks
Robert Booth Sun 16 Aug 2026 14.00 CEST Last modified on Mon 17 Aug 2026 03.30 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google N ear the collonaded entrance to Sony Pictures’ historic Culver City film studio, a tech-powered rival has sprung up this summer. The artists at Promise, a new studio feeding off the potential of AI, can glimpse the lots where Singin’ in the Rain and Men in Black were shot, but no longer do they need to get beyond the studio’s high walls to make their visions come true.
From far more modest premises, they are making movies with rapidly accelerating AI models that create backgrounds, special effects and even “synthetic performers” – using US models but also driven by market-leading Chinese AI.
Backed by Google, Silicon Valley venture capitalists and Disney, Promise is one of a rising number of AI film studios now taking root in Hollywood, with the result that traditional studios’ vast sound stages and financing are becoming less necessary.
It is a controversial trend. Leading directors including Christopher Nolan and Guillermo del Toro have criticised generative technology, actors and writers are fearing for their jobs, and the Democratic congresswoman Laura Friedman, who represents Hollywood’s actors, writers and directors, warned last month: “We can’t wait until we see tens of thousands of American workers displaced.”
But the excitement and energy about AI’s potential was palpable this week at Promise’s new base when a human actor, Tori Thomas, waited for her call amid rows of computers for early shooting on the studio’s newly announced AI-enabled horror film, Touch Grass, with a budget in the low millions of dollars.
The sound stage was little more than a corner of the office hung with white sheets. A small camera followed Thomas as she scrambled in a chase scene, then the AI did the rest. It superimposed her movement in real time on to a field of swaying grass generated by a Chinese AI model, Seedance 2.5, released this month, which looks set to dramatically slash production times.
Whole scenes – actor and backdrop – were instantly visible on the director’s handheld monitor, as if they were filming in real locations. Even the seedheads in the AI-generated meadow moved as Thomas appeared to brush past. In another take, the field was easily replaced by a nightmarish underground cavern. With a glance at the screen, Thomas could immediately see the backdrop she was acting with.
Promise is not alone in embracing the technology, which Netflix last week said it had used in 300 of its 1,000 titles in 2026. Ron Howard, the veteran director of the Da Vinci Code and A Beautiful Mind, is set to release an AI-enabled animated documentary feature about prisoners of war in Vietnam, working with another new AI studio, Obsidian. Brad Pitt said this week that while there was a lot of pushback, “AI is going to be the very thing that, i…