Bodycam footage from firefighters shows the speed needed to put out the blaze sweeping through the northwestern US. More than 60,000 people have fled their homes as wildfires raged near Spokane, Washington for a third straight day.
As performers protest and studios sue in their war on artificial intelligence, the entertainment industry is deepening its dependence on it.
Although few places are better than Hollywood at crafting a narrative and concealing what happens off-frame, a Los Angeles Times survey of job postings sheds light on what is happening offstage.
Among hundreds of job postings in late June, more than one in 10 was likely connected to AI. The top studios’ public postings suggest they have been recruiting people to build AI tools. They are also recruiting teams to defend their intellectual property against unauthorized AI use.
“There are plenty of studios that are hiring [for AI] but never talk about it in public,” said Yoland Yan, a co-founder of ComfyUI, a company that helps studios juggle different AI tools.
Companies have been hesitant to detail how they use generative AI in film production — partly because they are concerned about consumer and union backlash.
The Walt Disney Studios complex on May 3 in Burbank.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Some in Hollywood described AI use as the new cosmetic surgery, where everyone knows it is happening, but few will admit to it.
Recent want ads show Amazon MGM Studios trying to find a principal AI executive and Walt Disney Studios advertising for a production innovation technologist job.
“What you’re seeing in those job postings is that adoption is already happening,” said Bryn Mooser, chief executive of Asteria, an AI film studio.
Netflix recently posted a job that didn’t exist a year ago.
The streamer was hiring for the role of “Manager, Generative Workflows,” a job to help integrate more AI into Netflix films. It promised hands-on experience with the cutting-edge technology.
“The industry is flooded with speculative GenAI roadmaps, but few are battle-tested in production,” the post said, referring to generative AI. The post said the role will work on introducing AI into Netflix’s slate of films being released in the U.S. and Canada.
Although some companies may be shy about sharing their AI plans, big stars who don’t have to answer to others have been more open about their embrace of the new technology for storytelling.
An exterior view of the Netflix sign at Netflix on Vine in Hollywood in 2025.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Rejecting AI is like picking a horse and buggy over a car, said “Star Wars” creator George Lucas.
“Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies,” he told a trade magazine earlier this year. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress. It’s the future.”
Some in Hollywood have a softer stance on artificial intelligence, with studios cutting deals with AI companies, and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese backing AI companies.
Ben Affleck launched an AI film tech company then sold it to Netflix for half a billion dollars.
When launching InterPositive, Affleck said he wanted to keep “storytelling human” by building AI tools that could fix lighting, generate missing shots and other things while “keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists.”
The Times’ survey turned up two senior InterPositive roles to update the programming to apply AI to visual effects .
The Culver Studios on Feb. 12 in Culver City.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
To gauge what is happening behind the scenes, The Times used Claude Code to build a scraper to identify job postings at Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony, Netflix and Amazon MGM. It found around 250 film studio job postings that were still public as of late June. Around 30 of those seemed to be connected to AI.
Disney, Netflix and Amazon had job postings that were about using AI on the creative side of the business. Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros. and Sony had job ads suggesting they were also using AI but for marketing, distribution and audience analytics.
The postings suggest the Disney, Netflix and Amazon studios are building repeatable AI workflows for visual effects, animation, sound and dubbing. The companies also seem to be building in-house teams to develop custom generative-AI models, while also using third-party software.
None of the jobs advertised were to create AI that wrote scripts or created AI actors.
Disney’s ten or so AI jobs showed the century-old studio building out its AI research and production muscle, while protecting its vault of beloved characters.
Mouse House is hiring PhD-level talent to study “computer graphics and AI” for Pixar and Disney films, people to “bridge the gap between research and practical studio application.”
Industrial Light & Magic, the Disney-owned visual effects shop, was searching for supervisors to “explore emerging technologies (including AI/Machine Learning)” to develop new production workflows.
The company’s audio post-production unit, Skywalker Sound, seemed to be recruiting to build proprietary AI models for soundtracks, voice separation, and voice transfer, the process of taking a speaker’s tone and pitch, and applying it to new content.
Disney was also hiring to defend itself. Three of its jobs were for “content security” to assess AI tools and guard against piracy, watermarking and rights-protection work.
The company’s public posture has so far been pursuing lawsuits against AI companies for inappropriate use of copyrighted material, and it pulled out of its plans to invest $1 billion in an equity investment deal with OpenAI.
Netflix’s posts suggested it is bringing more AI to the creative side of its business.
Netflix’s senior director of creative innovation, Girish Balakrishnan, outlined at the Runway AI film festival how AI was used to create soccer fans in “Brazil ’70” and establish shots for fight scenes in “Glory.”
Amazon, an early adopter, was hiring a principal AI executive to drive AI-tool adoption across production, plus roles in operations automation and LLM content classification, the listings revealed.
The Seattle-based streamer has been the most aggressive AI adopter in studios, and commissioned three AI animation series through its GenAI creator fund in May. Amazon has also bankrolled a Manhattan Beach production services company, Innovative Dream.
Even as studios build bigger AI teams, many in the industry are resisting, and some film fans are concerned.
The actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA in June ratified a new four-year contract with special protections against synthetic performers, and the union has backed a national bill designed to protect individuals from unauthorized, AI-generated digital replicas.
Studios have met with the union twice a year since 2023 to provide a confidential report on their AI-related activities. The studios tell the union they aren’t yet using AI that would entirely replace humans, said a person familiar with the discussions.
The union says it has no evidence that generative AI is being used to create performances, and the studios are supposed to notify the union if that happens.
Actors, writers, production staff and movie fans are still resistant to the overuse of AI and defining when and where it is acceptable, so studios are treading lightly, said AI film studio CEO Mooser.
“It’s been really a challenging thing to adopt both socially, ethically and legally, but we are seeing more adoption of it than we’ve ever seen before,” he said.
Three firefighters were killed and two more were injured Saturday during a “burnover” incident while battling the a 28,000-acre wildfire along the Colorado-Utah border, officials announced. File Photo by Peter DaSilva/UPI | License Photo
June 28 (UPI) — Three firefighters were killed while battling a wildfire in western Colorado, the Department of the Interior announced Sunday.
Two others were being treated for burn injuries sustained in the Saturday “burnover” incident at the Knowles and Gore fires in Mesa County near the Colorado-Utah border, officials in a statement.
The identities of the fallen Wildland Fire Service and Forest Service firefighters were not immediately released pending notifications of their relatives.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said he was “devastated about the loss of three heroic firefighters who died in the line of duty in Western Colorado.”
In a statement, the he praised “the men and women who serve on the front lines of these fires risk their lives to keep us safe and to protect the lands and communities we love.
“To the loved ones of those lost, and to their fellow crew members — some who are still battling the flames — know that the State of Colorado mourns alongside you.”
Polis said the Colorado National Guard, the federal Bureau of Land Management and local officials and firefighters have been deployed to fight the Snyder-Mesa Fire, which on Sunday was estimated to be more than 28,000 acres, and to recover the bodies of the three fallen firefighters.
The governor said the two surviving firefighters had been extracted by helicopter.
On Saturday he activated the State Emergency Operations Plan and directed the Colorado Department of Public Safety to take responsibility for all response, recovery and mitigation efforts on the Snyder Mesa Fire.
The deaths came as powerful wind gusts, extremely low humidity and the threat of dry lightning fueled an outbreak of large wildfires across the southwestern United States.
Utah has been the hardest hit. Including the deadly blaze along the Colorado border, multiple fires exceeding 10,000 acres have erupted over the past week across the state. The Cherry and Iron Fires southwest of Provo, along with the Cottonwood Fire in south-central Utah, are among the largest active wildfires.
The weather pattern responsible for the heightened wildfire danger is expected to persist through much of the week, forecasters say.
Smoke from fires in Northern California lowers visability of the Bay Bridge and San Francico as viewed from Yerba Buena Island on October 2. Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo
“This past weekend, after undergoing CT and PET scans, I learned that my ovarian cancer has returned,” Evert, 71, wrote. “I have already undergone surgery as the first step in my treatment and recovery, and will begin chemotherapy in the coming weeks.
“Because of this, I will not be attending Wimbledon this year, and I will step back from my professional commitments over the next few months to focus on my health.”
Evert was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer in December 2021. Two years later, she revealed her cancer had returned.
“Ovarian cancer is relentless, but I will stay optimistic and determined in continuing to fight this battle,” Evert wrote. “I am deeply grateful to my medical team, my family, friends and everyone who has reached out with kindness and encouragement. I look forward to seeing everyone again soon.”
Evert was one of the most dominant women’s tennis players of the 1970s and 1980s, winning a record seven French Open titles to go with six at the U.S. Open, three at Wimbledon and two at the Australian Open. She won at least one Grand Slam for 13 consecutive years (1974-1986) and retired in 1989 with a career record of 1,309-146.
Her on-court rivalry with Czech American tennis great Martina Navratilova during that period is legendary, with Navratilova beating Evert in six of their 10 Grand Slam finals against one another and 43 of their 80 overall matches as opponents. They also won the French Open in 1975 and Wimbledon in 1976 as doubles partners.
A new Netflix documentary, “Chris & Martina: The Final Set,” covers their history together, which also includes a decades-long friendship and support for each other through numerous battles with cancer (Navratilova was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in 2010 and stage 1 throat cancer and breast cancer in January 2023; she announced she was cancer-free in June of that year).
Navratilova was one of the first people to comment on Evert’s Instagram post.
“My friend Chrissie is a champion of champions and as such she will slay this monster again,” Navratilova wrote. “We are all pulling for you, and know you will come out on the other side cancer free again- lots of love, m.”
Other former on-court rivals and fellow International Tennis Hall of Fame members also offered their heartfelt support in the comment section of Evert’s post.
“You beat me 18 straight times, therefore you can beat cancer 19 straight if you have to,” wrote Pam Shriver, who lost 19 of her 22 career matches against Evert. “Much love and respect to one of the greatest competitors ever, Pammie”
Billie Jean King, who lost 19 of her 26 matches against Evert, wrote: “You are a champion and a fighter, and you will beat this. Sending love and prayers from both of us for a strong recovery.”
On The Chequered Flag podcast, former McClaren mechanic Marc Priestley and F1 journalist Rebecca Clancey discuss the rivalry between Mercedes team-mates Kimi Antonelli and George Russell in their bid to top the Drivers’ Championship.
A new trailer for Clarkson’s Farm has shown a moment when Jeremy Clarkson was hospitalised after suffering an issue with his heart where it “wasn’t getting any blood”
Jeremy Clarkson in the trailer for Clarkson’s Farm series five(Image: NETFLIX)
A new trailer for Clarkson’s Farm has shown the horrifying moment when star Jeremy Clarkson had to be hospitalised after a heart scare. In the clip, he told colleague Kaleb Cooper that his heart “wasn’t getting any blood”.
The trailer for season five was released on 18 May. It started with clips about life at Diddly Squat, including Jeremy’s pursuit of a driverless tractor, but the tone suddenly shifted when he opened up about a recent hospitalisation.
Clips of the star in hospital, with wires connected to his chest, just after a clip of an ambulance racing down a country road. Jeremy could be heard telling Kaleb: “You’ve got three arteries that feed your heart to keep it pumping. My heart wasn’t getting any blood.”
The camera cut to Kaleb’s shocked face before another Diddly Squat farmer said: “To be fair, my mother dropped dead of heart attack at 67.” Jeremy responded that this was “cheery news”.
Jeremy has faced heart issues before. In 2024, he went through a heart procedure where he has a stent put in to open up a blocked artery after suffering from tightness in the chest. Writing in his column for the Sunday Times, the then 64-year-old said he thought he was having a heart attack because the symptoms were so familiar: “I certainly wasn’t having a heart attack. But if it hadn’t looked that way, I never would have been sent to hospital.”
Though he will discuss his latest hospitalisation in Clarkson’s Farm, Jeremy does not seem to be letting his heart scare slow him down. The rest of the new trailer showed him to be getting stuck into life at the farm as it battled a tuberculosis outbreak among the animals.
It also saw him consider using a driverless tractor. In the trailer, Jeremy is sitting in his office and talking to Charlie Ireland: “I’ve had a brainwave, don’t worry.” Charlie was left shocked when he was handed a piece of paper that had plans for a driverless tractor.
The footage cut to said tractor, which was described as the “Starship Enterprise of farming”, working away on the land and Jeremy declaring to farmhand Kaleb: “Behold my technology at work.” Kaleb responded: “That is basically taking my job.”
But, Kaleb didn’t have to worry about his job as the tractor soon stopped moving in the middle of ploughing a field. “That went well,” Kaleb joked.
The new series was greenlit by Prime Video back on November 5, 2024 and filming took place last year. The first four episodes will be released on 3 June and the remaining will arrive in batches on the 10th and 17th.
Prime Video have not said if the show will continue after the upcoming series, but Jeremy has expressed his desire to have the show come back for at least two more seasons.
“We’ll definitely do six – Amazon want to [do season six] and I want to. I’ve got a good idea for six,” Clarkson told The Sun earlier this year. “I said I’ll stop doing them when there are no more ideas. But I’ve got two quite good ones, so we’ll do six and then we’ll see.”
