Hollywood should embrace AI, says Jeffrey Katzenberg
What's the deal? Jeffrey KatzenbergDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — former Walt Disney Studios chair and DreamWorksDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → co-founder, now co-founder of WndrCo — published a ~2,400-word essay on X, "The World is Changing: AI For Creativity" (23 September 2026). He argues that AI is not going away and that Hollywood should stop resisting it and instead decide the terms on which it will be used — consent, credit and compensation for artists. The essay was widely shared, including by Mark SusterDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, who called it proof of creativity, storytelling and soul over what he terms AI slop.
What he says: Katzenberg recounts watching an AI-generated animated scene in Silicon Valley and feeling the same awe he felt in 1986 watching Luxo Jr, and an artist friend asking "Is this the end of us?" — his answer: "Certainly not." He draws on John Philip Sousa's fight over the phonograph, which helped bring about the Copyright Act of 1909 though it did not stop the technology, and on the arrival of sound, which wiped out orchestra-pit jobs but gave rise to the movie musical, modern scores and sound design. He also compares the industry's shift from hand-drawn to computer animation — via CAPS with PixarDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and the move to fully computer-animated films at DreamWorks. To resist technology, he concludes, is to risk irrelevance: Kodak and Blockbuster versus Apple and Netflix.
Why it matters: Katzenberg discusses asking an AI model about the difference between reasoning and creating: reasoning evaluates what exists, while creating produces something new with no single right answer. AI, he argues, operates almost entirely on the reasoning side and lacks human empathy, taste and serendipity — "It is statistics, not soul; it is emulating things that have been done." In 2023 he predicted AI tools would cut the time and cost of world-class animation by up to 90% within three years, and he repeats that tools are never the point — taste and imagination endure, and artists who learn to wield the new instruments will do things the engineers never dreamed of. He closes with a call for both sides to shape "the terms",noting Steve Jobs's line that technology married with the humanities "makes our hearts sing",and concludes: "The north has the new tools. The south has the creative soul. The best future will draw on the best of both worlds."
Read more: Jeffrey Katzenberg on X · Mark Suster on X
