The annual AI Film Festival hosted by the startup runway kicked off yesterday in partnership with IMAX.

The festival features AI-assisted short films but might also represent Hollywood's increasingly complicated relationship with the technology.

Our Julia Boorston digs into that for today's tech check. Hey Julia.

Hey Carl, well, this is a high-stakes moment for Hollywood. Studios need AI tools to help them

cut production costs, though AI does risk drawing backlash from creators and fans, and it could

raise concerns from the actors and writers' unions. And studios also need to work to protect

their intellectual property on these new platforms. Now, one winner so far,

Disruptor 50 company Runway AI, valued at about $3.5 billion. It recently launched new AI

tools to edit scenes. A prompt can add fog in the background or remove the car. Now, Runway's

holding is third annual AI film festival this week, showcasing short films created

with this technology. This is the first year that IMAX is partnering to screen the top AI

films at 10 U.S. locations. Runway has deals with AMC networks and with Lionsgate. sources

tell us that Netflix and Fox are also customers and that Disney has

experimented with the tools. Amazon Prime Video's historical series, House of David used runway

and other AI tools to create over 70 shots throughout the show to help address budget

constraints. Now, sources across the studios tell me that it is not winner taketake-all that they are using a range of AI tools and hiring new employees to integrate AI software.

Another leading AI startup stability AI has drawn James Cameron as an investor and a board member.

He's helping the company develop tools to streamline pre and post-production processes, such as

visual effects in editing. It's also partnering with studios to train specialized models.

Now, the financial implications of these AI tools could be massive. Morgan Stanley projects

that generative AI tools could lead to up to a 30% decrease in costs for film and TV companies.

This all comes against the backdrop of Disney and Universal teaming up to sue another AI company

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