AI Filmmaking News 2025: Anthropic Settlement, OpenAI's Critterz & What It Means for Actors

So much has happened recently in the world of AI and AI filmmaking. In this blog, I want to compress the key pieces of news most relevant to actors.

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Anthropic Lawsuit

NYT: Anthropic Settlement

Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5bn to authors to settle a copyright violation lawsuit. While not an admission of guilt, it signals what’s likely to come across the industry. Recall that Disney and Universal are also suing MidJourney for copyright violations (BBC).

Companies that have trained on dubious data will be held accountable. For actors and creatives, this is a massive plus: it encourages adoption under fairer terms.

ElevenLabs, for instance, took a collaborative approach with its new music product, working alongside partners to create fair compensation for rights holders (BusinessWire). I believe this will become the norm. AI won’t replace creative industries through mass displacement—it will evolve through collaboration.

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OpenAI & Critterz

OpenAI has announced its backing of Critterz, a $30 million animation set to release in summer 2026. The claim: it can deliver animation quality on par with films that cost far more. Given the rapid pace of AI innovation this year, I don’t doubt it.

The real question is whether audiences care that a film was largely made with AI.

If Critterz succeeds, adoption of AI filmmaking tools will accelerate dramatically across the industry. If not, I expect a slower, hybrid approach.

Either way, I think Critterz release will fuel collaboration between AI filmmakers and (acting) influencers, as I’ve stated in prior blogs.

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What This Means for Actors

Stronger regulation is a huge plus for actors. Restricting companies from freely training on data shifts power back to rights holders—and to the artists behind that data. ElevenLabs’ collaborative model points to what’s ahead: if you want to use our data, you must compensate us. Simple. Whether this leads to better overall outcomes for creatives is unclear, but compensation will exist.

As for Critterz:

• If it succeeds, audiences will have answered a key question—do they care if media products rely heavily on AI? I suspect that enough will be indifferent for AI-reliant films to be commercially viable.

• But many questions still remain. Critterz uses real voices and was written by humans (the team behind Paddington in Peru). Its success won’t tell us whether enough audience members (to make the product commercially viable) will accept an entirely AI-generated media product.

Personally, I think there will be strong enough demand from audiences for real actors—for the profit-maximising decision to be to hire them.

Also worth noting: Critterz is animation, not live-action. The best “live-action” AI film I’ve seen so far is: This is Eve & Adam.

It’s impressive, but still far from capturing the nuance of human performance. Will AI get closer? No doubt. Will it truly match? Probably not. And will audiences care? My view—for now—is that enough will for studios to keep hiring real actors, regardless of their social capital.

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References

• NYT — Anthropic Settlement
  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/technology/anthropic-settlement-copyright-ai.html
• BBC — Disney & Universal vs Midjourney
  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg5vjqdm1ypo
• BusinessWire — ElevenLabs Music Collaboration
  https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250805333301/en/ElevenLabs-Launches-Eleven-Music-in-Collaboration-with-Music-Industry-Partners
• LinkedIn — This is Eve & Adam
  https://www.linkedin.com/posts/metapuppet_this-is-eve-adam-spoilers-below-watch-activity-7360020533532315648-ThMD

See also

• Top AI Tools for Actors
• Hollywood Already Uses Generative AI
• ActingPal FAQ: AI Scene Partner & Self‑Tape App