Martin Scorsese joins Black Forest Labs as partner and adviser

In short: Director Martin Scorsese has become a partner and adviser to AI image startup Black Forest Labs, and says he will only use its tool for storyboarding.

What happened

Martin Scorsese has signed on as a partner and adviser to Black Forest Labs, an AI company that makes tools that can generate images from text prompts. The news was reported by The New York Times and summarized by TechCrunch.

Scorsese said he is using the technology only for storyboarding. Storyboards are rough pictures that map out a movie scene before it is filmed, like a comic strip used as a plan. Scorsese said he has made his own storyboards for 70 years, and this tool helps him share his vision faster with the camera team and production designers.

Black Forest Labs has about 70 employees and is based in Freiburg, Germany. TechCrunch reports the company’s image tools are used inside products from Adobe, Canva, Microsoft, and Meta. The company was last valued by investors at $3.25 billion, and one investor group includes BroadLight Capital, which was co-founded by Scorsese’s talent manager, Rick Yorn.

TechCrunch also notes that Black Forest Labs was founded by the team behind Stable Diffusion, another well-known image generator. Wired previously reported that the company declined to partner with Elon Musk’s xAI after an earlier collaboration ended over concerns about content safeguards.

Why it matters

AI in entertainment is often controversial because it can copy styles and raise questions about who gets paid and credited. Scorsese’s limited use, only for planning shots, is still a sign that some Hollywood figures are becoming more open to AI tools, at least behind the scenes.

Source: TechCrunch AI