Report advises how screen industries harness AI

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A report published by the BFI sets out a roadmap of key recommendations to support the delivery of ethical, sustainable, and inclusive AI integration across the UK screen industries. The aim of the report is to enable the UK to capitalise on its creative strengths, supporting independent companies to scale-up and compete globally.

'AI in the Screen Sector: Perspectives and Paths Forward' is published by the BFI as part of its role within the CoSTAR Foresight Lab; CoSTAR is the UK’s Creative R&D network. This the second report published this year for CoSTAR on AI use in the creative industries, following a study into sustainability impacts of AI and other convergent technologies.

Generative AI promises to democratise and revolutionise screen content creation.  It could empower British creators to produce high-quality content with modest resources, though concerns about copyright and ethical use remain significant barriers to full adoption.

The report considers how the adoption of generative AI within the UK screen sector raises significant legal, ethical, and practical challenges that need to be addressed to ensure sustainable and equitable integration.

Based on a detailed review of current AI adoption, experimentation and innovation, the report focuses on nine recommendations anchored to three strategic outcomes to deliver within the next three years that will help the UK screen sector to remain in the vanguard of innovation. These outcomes focus on delivering better AI over the next three years through frameworks, targeted support and growth.

Recommendations include:

• Set the UK in a position as a world-leading IP licensing market
• Embed data-driven guidelines to minimise carbon impact of AI
• Support cross-discipline collaboration to deliver market-preferred, ethical AI products
• Develop the sector to build skills complementary to AI
• Drive increased public understanding of AI use in screen content
• Unlock investment to propel the UK’s high-potential creative technology sector

Rishi Coupland, the BFI’s Director of Research & Innovation, said:

“AI has long been an established part of the screen sector’s creative toolkit, most recently seen in the post-production of the Oscar®-winning The Brutalist, and its rapid advancement is attracting multi-million investments in technology innovator applications.  However, our report comes at a critical time and shows how generative AI presents an inflection point for the sector and, as a sector, we need to act quickly on a number of key strategic fronts."

Read the full report.