Martin Scorsese has signed on as a partner and adviser to AI image-generation startup Black Forest Labs, the New York Times reported on June 2, 2026. The director says he is using the technology exclusively for storyboarding — not for any broader filmmaking application.
“For 70 years, I’ve been creating my own storyboards,” Scorsese said in a statement to the Times. The tool, he said, helps him communicate his vision to cinematographers and production designers faster and more efficiently.
Black Forest Labs is a 70-person company headquartered in Freiburg, Germany — near the actual Black Forest — rather than in San Francisco. Despite that address, its image-generation technology powers features inside Adobe, Canva, Microsoft, and Meta. The startup was last valued at $3.25 billion by investors that include BroadLight Capital, a firm co-founded by Scorsese’s own talent manager, Rick Yorn. Black Forest Labs was founded by the team behind Stable Diffusion.
The company has also drawn attention for declining to partner with Elon Musk’s xAI in recent months, following an earlier collaboration on Grok’s image generator that ended amid concerns about the platform’s content safeguards, according to Wired.
Scorsese’s involvement may raise concerns within an entertainment industry that has largely resisted AI adoption, even given the limited scope of his use case. His partnership could suggest that Hollywood’s resistance to the technology is softening, as high-profile figures begin engaging with AI tools in at least some capacity.
Source: TechCrunch