Hollywood & Labor: AI, Technology, and the Future of Work in the Entertainment Industry

Join researchers, workers, and labor leaders for a conversation about how technology is changing contemporary Hollywood. Speakers will explore how new technologies are transforming what it means to work in the US entertainment industry and will answer questions about the future of Hollywood.

Work in US film and television production has been undergoing substantive changes: streaming has transformed how we consume film and media; the logics of Silicon Valley have altered Hollywood production practices, and artificial intelligence (AI) poses both possibilities and threats to the creative labor underpinning media production. These shifts have raised significant questions over the compensation, creative freedom, intellectual property, right of publicity, and overall labor conditions of creative workers. This symposium will explore these developments to better understand current and future challenges to how media is made, what sort of narratives are told, whose perspectives matter, and what values are to drive how media is produced in Hollywood.

Speakers will include Miranda Banks (Professor, Film, Television and Media Studies, Loyola Marymount University) and Kate Fortmueller (Associate Professor, Film, Media and Theater, Georgia State University), authors of the recent Boom and Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers (UC Press, 2026), and Jillian Arnold (Labor Expert, IATSE).

***Co Sponsors: Department of Film and Media Studies, UCI Labor Center, Department of English***

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