Led by entertainment executive Albert Cheng, the studio is developing AI tools to reduce costs, streamline workflows, and improve processes like character consistency and scene editing.
| Photo Credit:
FRANCIS MASCARENHAS
Amazon plans to use artificial intelligence to
speed up the process for making movies and TV shows even as
Hollywood fears that AI will cut jobs and permanently reshape
the industry.
At the Amazon MGM Studio, veteran entertainment executive
Albert Cheng is leading a team charged with developing new AI
tools that he said will cut costs and streamline the creative
process. Amazon plans to launch a closed beta program in March,
inviting industry partners to test its AI tools. The company
expects to have results to share by May.
Cheng described AI Studio as a “startup” operating under
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s “two pizza team” philosophy —
keeping the group small enough to be fed by two pizzas. The team
consists primarily of product engineers and scientists, with a
smaller creative and business contingent.
Amazon is publicly embracing AI in response to spiraling
production budgets that limit the number of shows and films
companies can finance. The technology will fast-track certain
processes to make more movies and TV shows more efficiently.
“The cost of creating is so high that it really is hard to
make more and it really is hard to take great risk,” Cheng said
in an interview. “We fundamentally believe that AI can
accelerate, but it won’t replace, the innovation and the unique
aspects that (humans) bring to create the work.”
The move to adopt artificial intelligence comes as A-list
actors like Emily Blunt have expressed fears about the rise of
AI — and particularly AI actress
Tilly Norwood would make their jobs obsolete.
Amazon emphasized writers, directors, actors, and character
designers will be involved at every stage of production, using
AI as a tool to enhance creativity.
Like many other tech companies, Amazon is also pushing nearly
every division to find uses for AI and pointed to the successes
of the technology as among the reasons it cut about 30,000
corporate jobs since October, its largest layoff ever. That
included a number of job cuts at Prime Video.
Cheng said AI could help Prime Video overcome some of the
inherent challenges of large scale film and television
production.
The AI Studio is building tools that bridge what Cheng described
as “the last mile” — perhaps a cheeky reference to Amazon’s
delivery operation — between existing consumer AI offerings and
the granular control directors need for cinematic content. That
includes improving character consistency across shots, and
integrating with industry-standard creative tools.
Amazon is leaning on its cloud computing division, Amazon
Web Services, for help and plans to work with multiple large
language model providers to give creators a wider array of
options for pre- and post-production filmmaking. Cheng said
protecting intellectual property and ensuring AI-created content
won’t be absorbed into other AI models are essential to making
the AI Studio work.
The AI Studio is working with producers Robert Stromberg
(“Maleficent”) and his company Secret City, Kunal Nayyar (“The
Big Bang Theory”) and his company Good Karma Productions; and
former Pixar and ILM animator Colin Brady, as it explores new
tools and how best to implement them.
The Studio, which launched last August, points to its hit
series, “House of David,” as an example of how AI could be used
in the future.
For the second season of the biblical epic, director Jon
Erwin used AI combined with live-action footage to create battle
scenes, seamlessly editing the two together to expand the scope
of sequences at lower cost.
Published on February 4, 2026
