When Hollywood’s writers and actors went on strike last year, it was, in part, because of AI. Actors didn’t care for the notion that their likenesses could be used without their permission, whether by the studios that hired them that week or by someone at home with a computer in 2040. Writers didn’t want to do punch-ups on potentially crummy AI scripts or have their words (or ideas) cannibalized by large language models that didn’t pay them a dime.

But while some Hollywood filmmakers came out of the strikes fearful of how AI might wreck their industries, others wanted to learn more. This week, many of those filmmakers gathered in a movie theater in Culver City, California, for the inaugural Culver Cup, a generative-AI film competition sponsored by FBRC.AI and Amazon Web Services.

Hundreds of moviemakers applied to be in the competition, and 50 were chosen. They got prompts and a production manifesto from Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Hard Candy director David Slade, credits to use on AI tools like Luma Dream Machine and Playbook, and a 3D version of a diner from Global Objects to use as a setting. They had a little under three weeks to turn in a two- to five-minute short. From those, eight were chosen to compete, in-person, with the audience at Monday’s LA Tech Week event selecting the ultimate winner.

The competition was meant to be “a little experiment,” says FBRC.AI cofounder Todd Terrazas, a way to gauge where the still nascent scene is now compared to where it’s been and where it’s going. Some mistakes in the shorts were inevitable, like inconsistencies in characters or noticeable visual artifacts, but event attendees generally seemed to come away impressed. Jon Jones, the head of AWS Startups, says the point was to see “what’s possible, not what’s perfect.”

Figuring out what’s possible is a fraught proposition when it comes to AI in Hollywood. Because even while AWS Startups is working with companies making generative AI tools for filmmaking, the division of Amazon that produces content for Prime Video spent much of last year bargaining with writers’ and actors’ unions, as part of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, over best practices for using AI in movie- and TV-making. The AMPTP has been negotiating with animators over AI, among other things, since August.

Amazon MGM Studios wasn’t involved with the Culver Cup. Instead, the event was an attempt to show how AI could be used to automate processes that independent filmmakers couldn’t do on their own. Hollywood will have to figure out the most fair way to use them.

A similar refrain came out of Adobe’s Max conference this week, where the company showed off new AI-powered video-editing tools while claiming they’re “not a replacement for human creativity.” Meta sang a similar tune on Thursday, when the company announced a collaboration with Blumhouse for which the horror studio paired filmmakers—Casey Affleck, Searching’s Aneesh Chaganty—with Meta researchers to test out its forthcoming Movie Gen video tool.

Connor Hayes, Meta’s head of gen AI, said in a blog post that it was about figuring out the “responsible use” of AI. Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum said the studio “welcomed the chance” to allow directors to “test this cutting-edge technology and give their notes on its pros and cons while it’s still in development.”

As a longtime director, Slade says he saw his role in the Culver Cup similarly. He wants to be a sober voice in the conversation about the technology’s role in filmmaking, even as he’s quick to admit that “there are things that terrify [him] about AI.” If anyone can make a gen AI film, he argues, then perhaps that’s how you find the next James Cameron or the next David Lynch.

“I couldn’t make a full-length, Pixar-like feature film on my own, just due to the amount of time to do every single second of animation,” says Playbook CTO Skylar Thomas, “but with gen AI, the volume that the individual contributor can create is that much higher, and that’s super exciting.” (It’s also cheaper, with Playbook cofounder JD LeRoy noting that a single second of VFX in a movie can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000, depending on complexity.)

Gen AI also means filmmakers can do more with less—or without access to the bureaucrats, budgets, and gatekeepers that have traditionally dictated what gets made in Hollywood. “The thing about making films is that, if you go to a studio, it costs a million dollars to take the camera out of the box,” says Slade. “That’s just the way it is. You’re immediately working in a very high-stress scenario where a lot of people are asking a lot of you and you’re asking a lot of permission to do everything you do.”

Granted, gen AI’s next auteur, animated or otherwise, probably won’t just be some Joe off the street with an idea and no technical know-how. Most of the Culver Cup finalists have some sort of filmmaking background or education, which has clearly given them a leg up in terms of the technical processes and general lingo involved in creation. The contest’s winner, who goes by the name Meta Puppet, says he’s been a full-time video editor for 18 years, as well as an actor and a screenwriter.

“You have to learn the fundamentals,” he says. “Technology will change, but storytelling won’t.”

To make his short, “Mnemonade,” really sing, Meta Puppet says he focused on giving the story some emotional heft. “I don’t think AI films will go fully mainstream until we get emotional dialog,” he says. He played all the roles in his short, about the poignance of sense memory and an elderly woman’s loss of memory, using AI from Silicon Valley “unicorn” ElevenLabs to shift his vocal performance into each character’s range and voice.

Maddie Hong, who went head-to-head with Meta Puppet in the Culver Cup finals, says that she understands Hollywood’s trepidation when it comes to AI. “There’s more potential for legal backlash and financial loss,” she says, referring to the danger of unintended (or even flagrant) copyright infringement during generation. The studios also have a “higher standard for image continuity,” Hong says, “given that they’re thinking about distribution on all types of platforms and screens.”

That being said, Hong agrees with people like Luma cofounder Amit Jain, who says that gen AI filmmaking could give the traditional studio system some flexibility in terms of budget and diversity of product.

“If you look at Hollywood today,” Jain says, “the majority of the high-budget productions are just recycling old franchises because it’s too tough to bet on a new idea or a new franchise .” It’s just safer, he says, to reproduce something than it is to imagine something new.

In Jain’s (admittedly biased) view, making more projects, even with lower budgets, means more people will work and more money will come rolling in. “I would actually posit,” he adds, “that people will actually have far better careers that are more fulfilling and long-lasting when they’re able to produce things that people actually do want to watch.” If there’s going to be any job loss in Hollywood because of AI, he suggests, the people who are going to go will be the ones most resistant to AI.

Recent research contradicts that notion. A survey of 300 entertainment industry leaders conducted earlier this year found that 75 percent believed gen AI had led to the elimination, reduction, or consolidation of jobs within their departments. It had also led to the creation of some jobs, but it was “not clear” if new jobs would offset jobs lost.

Other studies have examined how the VFX world in particular might be affected by more AI in production, with artists typically reporting interest or excitement around tools that could streamline their sometimes tedious workflows, but concern about the ethical and financial implications of the technology. While it would be cool, as Jain suggests, to team up with 11 of your friends to “make a feature film about a Boston Terrier that has superpowers” for relatively little money, it remains to be seen what effect the impact of sweeping AI availability will have on the industry as a whole.

For Meta Puppet, it comes down to skill, and who has it. “I liken gen AI to the piano,” he says. “Everybody knows about the piano. Not everybody is Mozart. Writing real masterpieces with AI, you have to wear a lot of hats, which is a good and a bad thing because if you have experience, that’s great. If you don’t, whatever you make is probably going to be bad.”