A24 Defends Its Google AI Deal: "We'd Rather Have a Seat at the Table Than on the Sidelines"
A24 is defending its AI research partnership with Google's DeepMind after fan backlash, saying it would "rather have a seat at the table than on the sidelines." Here's the pushback, and what the deal actually involves.
A24 is pushing back on the backlash to its AI research partnership with Google's DeepMind, after the deal — first covered here when it was announced — set off a wave of criticism from the studio's own fanbase.
In a statement first reported by Wired, A24 communications rep Sophia Shin framed the partnership as A24 trying to shape AI tools from the inside rather than have them imposed from outside: "This is a research partnership. We're working side-by-side with DeepMind's researchers to learn, iterate, and build, having an active hand in shaping new tools and workflows."
She continued: "This partnership exists because we want to dictate what tools get built for artists, and so they have a voice in shaping them rather than having tools handed to them. We'd rather have a seat at the table than on the sidelines."
The backlash, in short
A24's fans were not having it. Comments flooded the studio's Instagram and X posts accusing A24 of betraying the audience it built. As we covered when the deal was first announced, that audience skews young and AI-skeptical — and several A24 filmmakers have been openly critical of generative AI themselves.
"Backrooms" director Kane Parsons, whose comments we noted in our earlier coverage, has called generative AI a "symptom of broader cultural and economic rot," and said while there may be legitimate use cases in VFX-related work, the conversation is hard to have objectively given how much is at stake. His bluntest line: "If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would."
He's not alone. "Heretic" directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods went further than commentary — they put a disclaimer in their A24-distributed film's own credits stating no generative AI was used in making it, with A24's blessing to leave it there. Beck's framing of the moment is worth sitting with regardless of where you land on AI tools: "We are in a time where I feel like creatively we're in one of the big ethical battles, and the race is already ahead of us."
What the deal actually does and doesn't do
Worth restating clearly, since this tends to get lost in the noise: the partnership gives A24 access to DeepMind's research and infrastructure, with DeepMind researchers helping build new workflows and figure out what tools filmmakers might actually want. It does not give Google access to A24's content library or data, and there's no mandate that any A24 filmmaker has to use whatever comes out of it.
DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis framed the company's philosophy in a blog post this week: "the best way to develop tools that empower artists is to work directly with them," adding that collaborating with filmmakers from the start should help build tools that support authentic storytelling rather than override it.
The bigger pattern
This fits into a broader scramble happening across the industry right now: Disney's now-ended OpenAI licensing deal ran alongside its own copyright lawsuits against AI companies like MiniMax and Midjourney.
Lionsgate just expanded its Runway AI partnership to develop new franchises and AI-generated shows from its existing IP. Netflix bought Ben Affleck's AI filmmaking startup, InterPositive, earlier this year. Every major studio appears to be negotiating its relationship with AI in real time, often while simultaneously suing other AI companies over the exact same underlying technology.
Whether A24's "seat at the table" framing actually satisfies a fanbase that's already publicly furious is a separate question from whether the deal itself is reasonable. Both things can be true at once, and right now, both are playing out at the same time.
