Just a day after Lionsgate announced its partnership with AI company Runway, UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer called the deal “concerning” for artists.
“The deal that was announced … by Lionsgate, where they … made this connection with an AI company where they’re going to give this company tremendous access to all of their library — that’s concerning,” Zimmer told
Financial Times LA bureau chief Christopher Grimes at FT’s Business of Entertainment conference on Thursday. “If I’m an artist and I’ve made a Lionsgate movie, now suddenly that Lionsgate movie is going to be used to help build out an LLM for an AI company, am I going to be compensated for that?”
The partnership, inked Wednesday, will create AI models based off the studio’s archive film and TV content and is “fundamentally designed to help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors and other creative talent augment their work.”
Zimmer mentioned that his friends at Lionsgate might be “annoyed” by his remarks, but he shook it off, saying, “That’s show business.” When Grimes asked what his clients’ concerns were regarding AI, Zimmer listed some “basic concerns” — including, “Is my work going to get stolen? Is my likeness going to get stolen? Is my job going to be replaced? Am I going to be replaced?”
On the flip side, Zimmer detailed the “opportunity that comes with AI to help us be more efficient and thoughtful about the way we make shows and market shows and make movies and market movies,” which he said would be “really great for storytellers,” within the right legal framework.
“I think there’s open-mindedness and thoughtful conversations taking place,” he conceded. “But how do we get there? Who gets there first, and whether the spirit of those conversations is truly open and honest and fair, we are not going to know for a bit.”
Zimmer further noted the complex dynamic between both protecting artists now who are concerned by artificial intelligence and nurturing artists — who he identifies as “AI endemic” — that utilize the tool within their work, saying, “If we try to stop progress, we get run over by progress.”
“If Steven Spielberg, today, were in high school at 14 … making his first film, he might be making it … using AI prompts, and we don’t want that guy to feel like, ‘Oh, sorry, you’re a criminal,’” Zimmer said. “We want that guy to be rewarded for his excellence in utilizing the tools that are available him today.”
