The British Film Institute (BFI) has released a significant new report titled “AI in the Screen Sector: Perspectives and Paths Forward,” compiled by Angus Finney, Brian Tarran, and Rishi Coupland, as part of the BFI’s role within the CoSTAR Foresight Lab. The report aims to analyze how the UK screen sector is utilizing and experimenting with generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, and critically, sets out a “roadmap of key recommendations” designed to support the “delivery of ethical, sustainable and inclusive AI integration across the sector.”

Rishi Coupland, the BFI’s Director of Research & Innovation, highlighted the urgency, stating, “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.” Indeed, the makers of “The Brutalist,” a US-UK-Hungary co-production, used AI to tweak the Hungarian dialogue of its lead stars. While AI offers such technological benefits, including de-aging actors and improving accent authenticity, the report underscores a range of profound challenges alongside opportunities.

1. Rights: Addressing Copyright Concerns: A primary issue confronting the £125bn UK screen industry is the unauthorized use of intellectual property (IP) to train generative AI models. The report reveals that AI companies are reportedly plundering 130,000 film and TV scripts, a practice described as a “direct threat” to the economic foundations of the sector. The current training paradigm, where AI models use copyrighted material without permission, necessitates an urgent response. The BFI recommends setting the U.K. as a world-leading IP licensing market, suggesting that viable paths forward involve new licensing frameworks, standards, and technologies. The UK creative industries advocate for an “opt-in” regime, requiring AI companies to seek permission and strike licensing deals.

2. Skills: Preparing the Workforce for AI Integration: The report voices significant fears that AI automation could eliminate entry-level jobs, crucial for nurturing the next generation of workers, and displace skilled workers in areas like writing, translation, and some technical visual effects and character animation. The BFI’s fifth recommendation focuses on developing the sector to build skills complementary to AI. However, there's a “critical shortfall” in AI training provision, with current education being more “informal” than “formal.” Many workers, particularly freelancers, lack access to resources for upskilling, which is essential to future-proof the U.K.’s creative workforce and maintain its competitive edge.

3. Carbon: Minimizing Environmental Impact: Generative AI models, especially large-scale ones, demand substantial computational resources, leading to high energy consumption and carbon emissions. The BFI’s second recommendation calls for embedding data-driven guidelines to minimise AI's carbon impact, stressing that transparency regarding AI's environmental footprint is a critical first step.

4. Responsible AI: Ensuring Ethical and Inclusive Development: The third recommendation supports cross-discipline collaboration to deliver market-preferred, ethical AI products. Many current AI models and tools have been developed without sufficient input from the screen sector or audiences, leading to outputs poorly suited to production workflows or risking cultural homogenisation. For instance, large language models trained predominantly on U.S. data may marginalize local narratives. Academics advocate for ‘inclusive’ approaches, arguing generative AI’s full potential is realized only with creative professional participation.

5. Insight: Enabling Strategic Responses through Intelligence: Across the U.K. screen sector, many organizations, especially SMEs and freelancers, lack access to structured intelligence on AI trends, risks, and opportunities. This limits the sector’s cohesive response to disruption. The BFI’s fourth recommendation is to enable U.K. creative industry strategies through world-class intelligence, proposing an ‘AI observatory’ and ‘tech demonstrator hub’ to centralize insights and provide hands-on experience with emerging tools. This proposal has been endorsed by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee.

6. Public Transparency: Building Audience Trust: Transparency is deemed crucial for audience trust in the age of generative AI. Surveys show 86% of British respondents support clear disclosures when AI is used in media production. The BFI’s sixth recommendation aims to drive increased public understanding of AI use in screen content, calling for standards on content provenance and authenticity to combat AI-generated misinformation and ‘slop’.

7. Sector Adaptation & Independent Creation: Harnessing AI's Potential: Despite challenges, AI offers significant opportunities. Jonny Freeman, director of CoStar (the £75.6m national network of laboratories developing new technology for the industry), stated, “AI offers powerful tools to enhance creativity, efficiency, and competitiveness across every stage of the production workflow.” AI can speed up production, democratize content creation, empower new voices, and lower barriers for creators regardless of budget or experience. The BFI's seventh recommendation is to boost the U.K.’s strong digital content production sector—home to over 13,000 creative technology companies and London, the world’s second-largest VFX hub after Mumbai—to adapt and grow. The ninth recommendation focuses on empowering UK creatives to develop AI-supported independent creativity, fostering a more inclusive and dynamic creative economy where AI enhances human imagination.

8. Investment: Fuelling Creative Technology Growth: The report highlights a pressing need for targeted financial support for the U.K.’s creative technology sector. The House of Lords identified a “technology scaleup problem,” citing limited access to growth capital, poor infrastructure, and risk aversion as barriers. A Coronation Challenge report pointed to “significant” funding gaps at later investment stages, often filled by international investors, risking IP and talent migration. The BFI’s eighth recommendation is to unlock investment, stressing also the need for physical infrastructure for CreaTech innovators to demonstrate and sell their work.

The BFI’s report has emerged amidst active discussions about AI governance. Last week, the BBC director general and the boss of Sky criticized proposals to let tech firms use copyright-protected work without permission. Responding to industry concerns, Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Culture Secretary, reassured the creative industry, stating, “We approach you with no preferred option in mind... We are a Labour government, and the principle [that] people must be paid for their work is foundational. You have our word that if it doesn’t work for the creative industries, it will not work for us.”

In conclusion, the BFI’s comprehensive report underscores the dual potential of AI to revolutionize the U.K. screen sector while posing substantial risks. It calls for urgent, strategic action guided by its recommendations to ensure that AI integration is ethical, sustainable, and beneficial, ultimately supporting the continued global success and cultural richness of the U.K.'s creative industries.