Justin Trevor Winters, a screenwriting instructor at Loyola Marymount University, spent a year developing the syllabus for his “Producing and Screenwriting With AI” course, revising it more than a dozen times. But even that preparation wasn’t enough. When he launched the class last fall, there were no video generation models widely available to students. Then in January, tools like Sora and Google’s offerings were released and he had to scramble to update the course for the spring semester.
Constantly adapting may be chaotic for educators, but it’s proving valuable for students entering an industry where everyone is learning AI on the fly. By the end of the year, one student created an entirely AI-generated short film that was accepted into the Innovators Film Festival and led to a job offer from Secret Level, a visual effects studio.
“More than half the students were very skeptical that this was going to be worth their time, that the imagery or the films that it would create would be something that they could use,” Winters said. “And I think quite surprisingly for them, the skeptics became believers that this tool would definitely help them.”
While Hollywood writers and directors wage public battles over AI’s threat to human creativity — with more than 400 industry figures recently petitioning the White House to strengthen copyright protections against AI companies — film schools are taking a more opportunistic view. They’re racing to integrate AI tools into their curricula, convinced these skills are essential for their students’ future careers, even as they struggle to keep up with technology that evolves faster than traditional academic planning cycles allow.
At LMU, student demand has been intense. Winters said his course became the fastest-filling elective at the film school. He’s now developing two new courses for 2026: “The Business of Entertainment Law and AI” and “Film Development, Production and Sound Design.”
While there’s no way of telling exactly how many film schools are embracing AI in this way, the trend is growing across the nation. The University of Southern California launched a $10 million Center for Generative AI and Society in 2023, involving its School of Cinematic Arts alongside other departments. CalArts established the Chanel Center for Artists and Technology with funding from the luxury brand’s culture fund, focusing on AI and machine learning for visual arts, music and film. Syracuse University offers courses like “Generative AI Imaging: What Creative Pros Need to Know” for students in visual and performing arts. These institutions are positioning themselves at the forefront of a technological shift they see as inevitable for creative industries.
But it’s the industry response to his students that’s been most telling, Winters said. An agent friend reached out last semester looking for star students with AI experience. When Winters suggested a few other highly talented students who weren’t using AI, the agent’s response was blunt.
“He said, ‘I don’t care,’” Winters said. “‘I meet talented people all the time. I want to meet the ones who are leveraging the technology that are preparing themselves for the future of storytelling.’”
The demand is translating into job placements. Winters said his students have landed positions at companies including Promise, Moonvalley/Asteria, Staircase Studios, Luma, Metaphysic, Runway, Adobe, Amazon and Google.
An AI tools “arms race”
Different schools are taking markedly different approaches. New York University’s small virtual production master’s program brought in industry professionals to teach a dedicated course called “Generative AI for Virtual Production,” including the use of Runway AI, whose founders are alumni of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
The 14-week course, which launched last fall, has students from around the world working together to produce 10-minute films. For a program already centered on digital environments and LED wall technology, adding a generative AI class represented an evolution rather than a revolution. But even there, keeping up with new developments is daunting.
“It almost feels like an arms race,” said Sang-Jin Bae, the director of the Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center at NYU. “Which AI tools should we be teaching? Which AI workflows should we be teaching?”
So far, students might take approaches that combine different AI platforms, like MidJourney for concept art, Runway for video generation and Sora for rendering. The exposure shows students how each tool requires different prompting techniques and approaches. But the specific tools matter less than learning to adapt to whatever emerges next.
“What AI accomplishes is letting the artist or students fail early,” Bae said. “It allows them to try different ideas, iterate them and see ‘is this going to work or is it not going to work’ very quickly.”
But at NYU’s larger undergraduate film program at the Tisch School of the Arts, the approach has been more cautious — and also revelatory. Richard Litvin, a professor who chairs the undergrad film and TV AI committee and co-chairs the school-wide Tisch AI roundtable, said faculty had a wake-up call when they started researching the technology.
“It became very clear to people like myself that we don’t know anything about AI and had to admit that we are curious, we are open, but honestly, we haven’t had to deal with it,” he said.
“It almost feels like an arms race. Which AI tools should we be teaching? Which AI workflows should we be teaching?”
– Sang-Jin Bae, director of NYU’s Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center
After a year of work, the school is planning its first dedicated AI course for fall — a collaboration between film and interactive media departments that covers the history of generative art, ethical issues, the use of new tools and developments across advances in AI. And while Litvin said there has been a lot of enthusiasm, the integration has limits.
Some faculty have pushed back, saying there is no good use case for AI, according to Litvin. The resistance isn’t just about technology; it’s about preserving the fundamental creative process that film schools have long considered their core mission.
“There’s a lot of reactionary ambivalence about whether we are speeding up the end of an industry that’s already in trouble,” Litvin said.
A necessary skill
At the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), the approach has been more philosophical. Rather than chasing every new tool, faculty focus on teaching students to evaluate AI’s role in their creative process and recognize when human skills are still irreplaceable.
“If the AI helps my storytelling, I’m in,” said D.W. Moffett, the chair of film and television at SCAD. “But the AI cannot become my storytelling because, quite frankly, I can sniff that out pretty quick.”
The school integrates AI tools into existing virtual production classes, where students learn workflows that move from ChatGPT for story ideation to MidJourney for concept art, to video creation platforms like Kling, and then the editing tool Topaz for upscaling. But SCAD also maintains hands-on experiences that highlight AI’s limitations — students work on a sitcom stage with live audiences, learning that some creative decisions, like rewriting jokes in real time when they don’t land, still require human instinct that algorithms can’t replicate.
The institutional flexibility reflects deeper questions about what skills future filmmakers will actually need. With AI evolving so rapidly, some professors find themselves learning alongside their students rather than teaching from expertise. Moffett acknowledged the challenge of staying ahead of students who may be learning faster than their instructors.
“The assumption that somehow I’m going to know more about AI than a 24-year-old who’s really doing a deep dive in it is absurd,” Moffett said.
