Hollywood Assistants Are Using AI, Despite Themselves

The Hollywood Reporter spoke to a dozen assistants and support staff working across studios, networks, and agencies. Every one of them spoke on condition of anonymity. Every one of them is using AI.

The interviews, part of THR's dedicated AI Issue published in May 2026, reveal a gap between official company policy and daily practice that runs through the entire lower tier of the industry's workforce.

What They Are Using It For

The use cases span a wide range. At the low end, assistants described using AI to fit thank you notes to character limits. In the middle, they described AI notetakers sitting in on studio meetings with streaming series creatives. At the high end, some are using AI for script coverage and development notes, two tasks that represent core professional responsibilities in the development pipeline.

Script coverage is particularly significant. Writing coverage is how most assistants demonstrate that they can read, analyze, and advocate for material. It is a key step toward becoming a development executive. If AI can produce coverage at a serviceable level, the role that coverage is meant to demonstrate becomes harder to justify.

The Policy Divide

Companies are not consistent about any of this. One partner at a major Hollywood management company told THR the firm does not allow AI use by support staff. Other entertainment companies described by interviewees are "more bullish about incorporating AI into day to day operations". Some ask staff to track their AI use; many have no formal guidance at all.

Warner Bailey, founder of the industry media company "Assistants vs. Agents", offered a pointed assessment of the tools themselves: "These are not tools built on the nuances of our industry".

What They Are Worried About

Environmental concerns came up repeatedly. Multiple assistants cited the energy consumption of AI systems as something that sits uncomfortably alongside their professional use of the tools.

The deeper concern is more direct: using AI to do your job faster is also evidence that your job can be done by AI. Assistants are in the position of proving their own replaceability every time they use the tool to speed up a task. This is the "despite their better judgment" quality the THR piece identifies, an entirely rational awareness of the situation that does not stop the behavior.

The Policy Gap the Guilds Have Not Filled

The WGA's new deal requires studios to notify the union when licensing writers' work for AI training. That provision applies to WGA members. Development assistants, who read the scripts and write the notes that move material through the system, typically operate below the WGA membership threshold.

A parallel story from Variety documented Hollywood script readers running their own informal experiment: comparing AI coverage to human coverage side by side. They did not reach a definitive verdict on which was better. What they did confirm is that the gap is small enough to be worth measuring.

The Wider Context

Hollywood's executives are aware that AI use runs through their companies, even when they do not have policies governing it. THR's coverage of the industry's broader AI posture describes studio executives sitting "on a strange fault line, thrilled by money saved, yet terrified of consumer-generated content". The assistant picture fits that same fault line, just lower on the org chart.

How Hollywood's internal AI conversations compare to its public statements is a recurring gap the industry has not resolved. Assistants operating without formal policy guidance are one more example of that gap playing out in practice.

Filmmakers who want to develop their own work independently of studio pipelines can access AI generation tools directly through AI FILMS Studio.

---

Sources

The Hollywood Reporter | Variety