MovieLabs supports tools and technologies that enable creativity and advance the craft of professional media creation, including AI. We work to empower freedom of creative choice and support for artists, creators and production teams throughout filmmaking and the media creation process, in a secure, efficient, and interoperable way.

We first published our vision for the future of media creation back in 2019. At the highest level, our vision has always had the following goal: To empower storytellers to tell more amazing stories while delivering at a speed and efficiency not possible today.” This remains as important today as it was back then. In the Vision white paper, we laid out 10 principles and identified several emerging technologies that would play significant roles in how we achieve this vision, including Artificial Intelligence. We said, “Rather than predict where Artificial Intelligence will have the biggest impact in the production and distribution of media, we are focused on creating an environment that enables those AI tools to work most effectively.”

Today, artificial intelligence is accelerating the evolution of how media and entertainment is created, managed, and distributed. As creative teams explore using AI in workflows, it is essential to ensure these systems are transparent, secure, interoperable, and aligned with creative intent, while respecting legal obligations.

Integrating AI into media creation workflows today requires navigating complex technical, operational, legal, and governance challenges. The presence of AI requires a clear and common understanding of how, where and when it was used. This helps organizations determine IP ownership and copyrightability as well as compliance with contractual obligations, usage restrictions and other critical aspects related to creative works. At MovieLabs, we do not develop AI creative tools or services, nor do we serve as a policymaking body. We focus on the technological building blocks that enable workflows to operate at scale with greater transparency, security, and effectiveness. These foundational elements will play a critical role in ensuring that AI technologies can be adopted with confidence, unlocking innovation while maintaining trust, and creative control.

MovieLabs current AI work is centered on four strategic focus areas:

1. Metadata & Context: Enabling AI to act with greater precision and creative alignment through rich contextual guidance. Defining “AI” is complicated by the continuous evolution of technologies that make it possible for machines to perform tasks that were once thought to require some form of human cognition. Rather than try to make fine distinctions between technologies, we prefer to take a broader approach and consider technologies ranging from “traditional” machine learning to deep-learning transformer, diffusion and agentic systems as all falling under the rubric of “AI”. Effective AI use requires more than data—it requires the appropriate context at the right time. We are developing approaches that enable AI systems to leverage rich metadata and contextual information (from training to inference), helping AI systems to operate with greater precision, relevance, and alignment to creative intent. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in content workflows, rich and precise context will be a critical enabler of quality, consistency, and control.
2. Transparency & Provenance: Establishing greater visibility, precise communication, and improved control of AI by defining frameworks for communicating the use of AI and capturing metadata about the media creation process. Effective governance and legal compliance depends on visibility. We focus on advancing mechanisms that define the necessary language and metadata to communicate about emerging needs and capture and preserve information about asset lineage, creative contributions (both human and AI), and the media creation process. By improving methods to bring transparency to AI systems and capturing provenance of AI use within workflows, we aim to strengthen accountability, facilitate shared understanding, improve interoperability, inform copyrightability, streamline review and approval, and support informed decision-making throughout the media creation lifecycle.
3. Security & Identity: Enabling secure use of AI within workflows through robust authorization and identity & policy-driven frameworks & practices. As AI systems and agents become active participants in production environments, evolving security to address emerging threats is critical. We are developing approaches and will document recommended practices that enable trusted interactions among people, systems, and AI agents, with a focus on authentication, authorization, identity, oversight, and operational controls. These foundational capabilities enable AI to operate safely at scale.
4. Change Management: Convening and guiding media technology stakeholders by providing a forum for thought leadership, education and resources. Technology transformation requires more than technology. The successful adoption of AI depends on shared understanding, open communication, practical guidance, and cross-industry collaboration. At the MovieLabs Industry Forum, we bring together media technology organizations to exchange ideas, develop technical best practices, and provide educational resources that helps navigate the opportunities and challenges of AI-driven change.

Looking Ahead

The future of AI in media creation will not be defined solely by the capabilities of individual models or applications. Ultimately, the future of AI in media will be shaped by the creative community and enabled by transparency, metadata architectures, security foundations, and collaborative practices that foster innovation.

MovieLabs is focused on advancing these foundational elements. By providing improved context for AI and fostering transparency, security, and industry readiness, we aim to help build an ecosystem to empower creative teams – where AI can be deployed responsibly, creatively, and at scale—unlocking new creative possibilities while preserving creative control. If your organization is not yet part of the MovieLabs Industry Forum and you want to get involved, you can join up at www.movielabs.com/industryforum.