Martin Scorsese Joins AI Image Startup Black Forest Labs as Partner and Adviser

Veteran director Martin Scorsese has signed on as a partner and adviser to AI image-generation company Black Forest Labs, deploying the technology exclusively for storyboarding. Scorsese said the tool allows him to communicate his visual intentions to cinematographers and production designers far more quickly than traditional methods, drawing on seven decades of creating storyboards by hand.

Black Forest Labs, a 70-person company headquartered in Freiburg, Germany, powers AI image features inside Adobe, Canva, Microsoft, and Meta, and carries a valuation of $3.25 billion. Its investors include BroadLight Capital, co-founded by Scorsese’s own talent manager, Rick Yorn. The startup was founded by the team behind Stable Diffusion and recently declined a partnership with Elon Musk’s xAI following an earlier collaboration on Grok’s image generator that ended over content moderation concerns.

Scorsese’s involvement, however limited in scope, marks a notable shift as Hollywood’s resistance to AI continues to ease.