Lionsgate, the studio behind the John Wick and The Hunger Games franchises, has raised some eyebrows by signing a deal with a tech startup to “explore the use of AI in film production.”

The news was announced in a press releaseon Wednesday, with Lionsgate partnering with AI film Runaway to create a new AI model, trained on Lionsgate’s massive film and TV library. Initial details are scarce, although the announcement says the deal is “fundamentally designed to help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors and other creative talent augment their work.”

“Several of our filmmakers are already excited about its potential applications to their pre-production and post-production process,” Lionsgate Vice Chair Michael Burns said in a statement with the announcement. “We view AI as a great tool for augmenting, enhancing and supplementing our current operations.”

Despite Burns’ assurances, the deal has already garnered backlash online, which isn’t too surprising given how much of hot-button topic artificial intelligence has been in the creative community. It was one of the key issues during last year’s writers’and actors’ strikes, and just last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into lawtwo bills restricting the use of AI digital replicas of performers.

“I wonder how the directors and actors of their films feel about having their work fed into the AI to make a proprietary model,” film concept artist Reid Southen wrote on X/Twitter. “As an artist on The Hunger Games? I'm pissed. This is the first step in trying to replace artists and filmmakers.”

Some called out how vague the details were in Runway’s announcement. There were no details on if creative teams would be compensated if their work was used by the AI model, and other questions were raised in regards to how the model would actually be trained.

Runway & @Lionsgate are partnering on a new AI video model, "customized" on Lionsgate's catalog.

"Customized" is a notably vague term. IMO an important question for both is: will this *only* be trained on Lionsgate's catalog? Or will other videos be used in pre-training? https://t.co/QgICWjv7zY pic.twitter.com/RW0O87i2J4

— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex) September 18, 2024

And others simply called out what a major – and precedent-setting – deal it could be. “Am I correct to think this is the first major Hollywood studio to agree to give a generative AI company access to its entire library in exchange for its own AI model??,” wrote Wall Street Journal editor Jessica Toonkel. Another

Other reactions from the film and TV community were swift and critical:

Over a year ago, I told you that I assumed the studios were NOT sending lawyers to the #AI companies over their models injesting their copyrighted films, because they wanted their own custom versions.
Well, here you go. https://t.co/t21mtqEGT8 pic.twitter.com/eucJw709sK

— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) September 18, 2024

Let’s see how this pans out. Part of the ickhttps://t.co/AnEabEEpw0

— Jim Geduldick (@Filmbot) September 18, 2024

Ok people, tell me generative AI won’t take filmmaking jobs again now Lionsgate has a deal with Runway AI. This isn’t going to stop and it is only going to speed up.

— Gavin Michael Booth (@GavinBooth) September 18, 2024

The backlash is only the latest in what’s been a rough year for Lionsgate, with two back-to-back box office flops in Borderlandsand The Crow. It also recently saw controversy for a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, pulling the trailer offline after it was discovered that the quotes it featured from famous film critics were completely fabricated.