The New Film Studio Where AI Does the Heavy Lifting, Not Hollywood
A startup called Promise has set up shop next to the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, and its filmmakers say they no longer need to get past those famous studio walls to bring ambitious films to life.
Key points
- Promise, a new AI-driven film studio, opened in Culver City, California in summer 2025, within sight of the historic Sony Pictures lot.
- The studio uses AI tools to generate backgrounds, visual effects and synthetic performers, cutting out the traditional studio middleman.
- Part of its production pipeline relies on Chinese AI models that its founders describe as market-leading.
- Supporters argue the technology will make mid-budget films financially possible again; critics worry about the ethics of synthetic performers.
- No major US legislation currently regulates the use of AI-generated performers in commercial film production.
Hollywood's walls are both literal and symbolic. Getting a film made through a major studio means pitching past layers of executives, fitting what has already made money, and surrendering creative control. Promise, a new production studio that opened this summer next to Sony Pictures' Culver City campus, is betting that AI makes those walls irrelevant.
The studio's team uses rapidly improving AI models to do work that once required enormous crews. Backgrounds are generated digitally. Special effects no longer demand a post-production house. Most strikingly, Promise works with what its founders call "synthetic performers," AI-generated characters that appear on screen alongside, or instead of, human actors.
Who does this affect first?
Mid-budget filmmakers feel it most immediately. This is the tier of film, typically costing between five million and fifty million dollars to produce, that the major studios largely abandoned after streaming reshaped industry economics. The argument Promise makes is direct: if AI can replace a significant slice of production costs, projects that were previously unbankable become viable.
For working actors and crew, it's more complicated. Synthetic performers sit at the centre of an ongoing labour dispute. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing American film and television performers, has pushed for rules requiring studios to obtain consent and pay residuals before using a performer's digital likeness. Those protections exist in some contracts, but no federal law mandates them across the board. Our earlier story on Hollywood's undisclosed AI use from 4 August found the industry's relationship with AI already far more entangled than the public debate acknowledges.
Promise's pipeline also draws on Chinese AI models, which its founders describe as market-leading for certain visual tasks. That detail matters because US lawmakers have spent the past two years scrutinising American companies' reliance on Chinese technology, though no current rule bars a film studio from using it.
What does this mean for ordinary moviegoers?
The near-term change is subtler than the headlines suggest. Films with AI-generated backgrounds and effects have already been in cinemas; most viewers didn't notice. Synthetic performers are newer and less polished, but the technology is improving fast.
The deeper shift is in what gets made. Cheaper production costs for mid-budget genre films means more of them reach screens. Whether AI-assisted films carry the same creative texture as traditionally made ones is a question audiences will answer with their ticket choices.
The irony of Promise's address, a modest office with a sightline to the Sony lot, is deliberate. Whether the films that come out of places like it are worth watching is the only verdict that will matter.
Common questions
Are synthetic performers the same as deepfakes?
Not exactly. A deepfake is typically made to deceive: AI-generated video or audio that impersonates a real, identifiable person without consent. Synthetic performers are AI-generated characters built for scripted storytelling, though the underlying technology overlaps and the ethical boundaries are still being drawn.
Does any law protect actors from having their likeness copied by AI?
In the United States, no federal law yet does this comprehensively. Some individual performer contracts negotiated by SAG-AFTRA include consent and payment clauses, but coverage is uneven and enforcement depends on the contract rather than statute. A New York State law has already pushed Amazon to require labelling of AI-generated people in product images, a sign that state-level action is moving faster than Congress.
