![Google Investing $75M Into A24 As They Look To Expand AI Use Across Studio [Report]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/22120236/A24_GOOGLE_AI_INVESTMEN_.jpg "A24_GOOGLE_AI_INVESTMEN_")
There have been warnings from various CEOs within the AI industry that without serious investment and companies being able to squeeze revenue out of the latest tech-bubble, they could be in trouble. And that likely has something to do with this latest news that Google is investing in AI with $75 million in the respected genre studio A24, with trying to get them on board with the use of the technology in various divisions.
That big report hails from The Wall Street Journal, where they detail that the investment is part of a “new AI research partnership between the two companies…Google’s DeepMind AI unit and A24 are aiming to create new tools for movie production and distribution.”
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We can’t help but be a little worried that this could have a serious impact on the studio’s ability to court talent and original projects in the future if this is heading where we’re thinking it could and extends to the extent of angering creatives (we could envision lawsuits could be on the horizion if the aim is training “creation tools” on existing human work, without consent of creatives). What we should caution is that what could be happening here is that Google might be hoping to gain access to the A24 library of work to help train AI technology, which could anger writers, actors, and filmmakers, as they likely wouldn’t have any say in their works being tossed into a plagiarism app (a majority of AI traning is done without getting consent or paying copyright owners for having the technology reguritate existing work as “something new”). This could be an open warning for artists to steer clear of A24 unless they’re comfortable that their films or shows could be used to train a new Google AI entity, for what we have to assume are moviemaking “tools” in an aim to make industry jobs obsolete.
This comes at a moment when A24 has been gearing up to take a big dip into the world of franchises with projects like Alex Garland‘s “Elden Ring” movie based on the recent fantasy video game now in-production, assigning filmmaker Michael Sarnoski (“The Death of Robin Hood”) for an ambitious live-action “Death Stranding” movie (that could easily get sequels after the second video game made a splash last year), and they’re also getting into the world of legacy horror with a “Crystal Lake” series (led by Linda Cardellini as Jason’s serial killer mother, Pamela Vorhees, from the original “Friday the 13th” installment) alongside Curry Barker’s (“Obsession”) gestating “Texas Chainsaw Masscare” reboot (JT Mollner and Glen Powell teaming for a series iteration, too).
These kinds of deals aren’t entirely shocking, as they got in bed with Josh Kushner‘s (yes, the brother of Jared Kushner and would certainly have the ear of President Trump) Thrive Capital (Disney‘s former CEO Bob Iger is a now a consultant for the firm) in 2024, who happens to sit on the OpenAI board. Interestingly enough, while Google (the owners of YouTube) competes with OpenAI, they heavily use Google Cloud, so these corporate they’re all intertwined and incestuous in different ways.
They wouldn’t be the only studio (feels like the first major indie to get in bed with a major AI company) to dip their toes into the possible tech bubble, as Disney had once signed a partnership with OpenAI last year, but that blew up when the Sora video tool was scrapped by the company earlier in the year (after threats of possible lawsuits across Hollywood). Also, Netflix got its hands on an “AI startup founded by Ben Affleck that can tweak scenes without reshoots”; however, the AI footprint across the industry, for the most part, has been minor, at best.
Public outrage has certainly been growing between artists seeing the forest for the trees of the damage AI can do to the medium of film/television and increasing anger toward the environmental impact on rural communities forced to host these AI data centers that are sucking up drinking water (also pulloting it) and straining energy resources, when water and energy don’t have endless supplies in the United States as humans seeminlgy are being told to do with less as evil billionaires have decided their pulloting AI data centers for a product that apparently isn’t even profitable is more important than our quality of life.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
