Art Directors Guild Accuses Martin Scorsese of "Betrayal" After He Becomes Advisor to Black Forest Labs' FLUX AI Tool

The Art Directors Guild (IATSE Local 800) has released a formal statement condemning Martin Scorsese after the acclaimed director appeared in promotional material for Black Forest Labs' AI image-generation product FLUX, in which he endorsed using the tool for storyboarding. The guild argued that Scorsese is "turning his back on the human artists" — including art directors, production designers, illustrators, and storyboard artists — who have collaborated with him throughout his career to visually develop his films.

In its statement, the guild also raised concerns about how generative AI models are trained, alleging that FLUX relies on "large swaths of copyrighted work, likely scraped from the internet without consent, credit, compensation, or transparency." It called Scorsese's promotion of the product "a betrayal of the collaborative nature of cinema." The dispute underscores ongoing tensions in Hollywood over AI's encroachment on unionized creative roles, particularly in pre-production visualization workflows.