A new report published on Monday by the British Film Institute (BFI) sets out nine recommendations for the U.K. screen sector to ensure that artificial intelligence will be a boon rather than bane for film and TV.

“AI in the Screen Sector: Perspectives and Paths Forward” analyzes current usage and experimentation with “rapidly evolving generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies,” the BFI said. “To ensure that the U.K. remains a global leader in screen production and creative innovation, the report sets out a roadmap of key recommendations to support the delivery of ethical, sustainable, and inclusive AI integration across the sector.”

The goal is for the U.K. to “capitalize on its creative strengths, enabling independent companies to scale up and compete globally,” it highlighted.

The report noted that the adoption of generative AI within the U.K. screen sector “raises significant legal, ethical, and practical challenges that need to be addressed to ensure sustainable and equitable integration.” The primary issue it highlighted is “the use of copyrighted material – including more than 100,000 film and TV scripts – in the training of generative AI models, without payment or the permission of rightsholders.”

This practice “threatens the fundamental economics of the screen sector if it devalues intellectual property creation and squeezes out original creators,” the report emphasized. “Other issues include safeguarding human creative control, the fear of job losses through replacement and investment for training in new skills, high energy consumption and carbon emissions, and risks to creative content around biased data.” 
 
The report was published by the BFI as part of its role within the CoStar Foresight Lab, the U.K.’s creative R&D network. “Generative AI promises to democratize and revolutionize screen content creation,” the BFI said in highlighting key opportunities. “Projects such as the Charismatic consortium, backed by Channel 4 and Aardman Animations, aim to make AI tools accessible to creators regardless of budget or experience. This could empower a new wave of British creators to produce high-quality content with modest resources, though concerns about copyright and ethical use remain significant barriers to full adoption. The BBC is piloting structured AI initiatives. The BFI National Archive and the BBFC are experimenting with AI for subtitling, metadata generation, and content classification, enhancing accessibility and operational efficiency.” 
 
The report also concluded that the U.K.’s “strong foundation in creative technology – home to over 13,000 creative technology companies – means that the U.K. screen sector is well-positioned to adapt to this technological shift.” It cited the likes of AI-enhanced dubbing and visual effects, interactive storytelling and automated content classification as areas of opportunity.

The report “navigates the complex landscape of AI in the screen sector by carefully weighing both its transformative opportunities and the significant challenges it presents,” said Professor Jonny Freeman, director of CoStar Foresight Lab. “The report acknowledges that while AI offers powerful tools to enhance creativity, efficiency, and competitiveness across every stage of the production workflow — from script development and pre-production planning, through on-set production, to post-production and distribution — it also raises urgent questions around skills, workforce adaptation, ethics, and sector sustainability.”

The publication comes at a time of much debate about genAI across Hollywood and beyond. “AI has long been an established part of the screen sector’s creative toolkit, most recently seen in the post-production of the Oscar-winning The Brutalist (to enhance the authenticity of accents), and its rapid advancement is attracting multi-million investments in technology innovator applications,” said Rishi Coupland, the BFI’s director of research & innovation. “However, our report comes at a critical time and shows how generative AI presents an inflection point for the sector and, as a sector, we need to act quickly on a number of key strategic fronts.” 

He added: “Whilst it offers significant opportunities for the screen sector such as speeding up production workflows, democratising content creation and empowering new voices, it could also erode traditional business models, displace skilled workers, and undermine public trust in screen content. The report’s recommendations provide a roadmap to how we can ensure that the U.K.’s world-leading film, TV, video games and VFX industries continue to thrive by making best use of AI technologies to bring their creativity, innovations and storytelling to screens around the globe.”

Here is a closer look at the nine recommendations in the BFI’s AI report.

Recommendation 1 
Rights: Set the U.K. in a position as a world-leading IP licensing market. 
“There is an urgent need to address copyright concerns surrounding generative AI. The current training paradigm – where AI models are developed using copyrighted material without permission – poses a direct threat to the economic foundations of the U.K. screen sector,” highlights the BFI report. “A viable path forward is through licensing frameworks: 79 licensing deals for AI training were signed globally between March 2023 and February 2025; the U.K.’s Copyright Licensing Agency is developing a generative AI training license to facilitate market-based solutions; and companies such as Human Native are enabling deals between rightsholders and AI developers.”

Concluded the report: “The U.K. is well-positioned to lead in this space, thanks to its ‘gold standard’ copyright regime, a vibrant creative technology ecosystem, and a coalition of creative organizations advocating for fair licensing practices.”
 
Recommendation 2 
Carbon: Embed data-driven guidelines to minimize carbon impact of AI. 
GenAI models require significant computational resources, resulting in high energy consumption and associated carbon emissions. “Yet the environmental footprint of AI is often obscured from end users in the creative industries,” notes the BFI report. “Transparency is a critical first step to addressing AI’s environmental impact. U.K.-based organisations such as Blue Zoo are already choosing to run AI models on infrastructure where energy sources and consumption are fully visible.”
 
Recommendation 3 
Responsible AI: Support cross-discipline collaboration to deliver market-preferred, ethical AI products. 
“Generative AI tools must align with both industry needs and public values,” emphasizes the BFI. “Many models, tools and platforms have been developed without sufficient input from the screen sector (or, indeed, screen audiences), leading to functionality and outputs that are poorly suited to production workflows or that risk cultural homogenization and ethical oversights. (Use of large-language models trained predominantly on U.S. data may marginalize local narratives, for example.) Academics have called for ‘inclusive’ approaches to AI development, arguing that generative AI’s full potential can only be reached if creative professionals participate in its development.”
 
Recommendation 4 
Insight: Enable U.K. creative industry strategies through world-class intelligence. 
The U.K. has more than 13,000 creative technology companies and a strong foundation in both AI research and creative production, according to Monday’s report. However, it also highlighted a lack of access to structured intelligence on AI trends, risks, and opportunities. “This absence of shared infrastructure for horizon scanning, knowledge exchange, and alignment limits the sector’s ability to respond cohesively to disruption,” it concluded.
 
Recommendation 5 
Skills: Develop the sector to build skills complementary to AI.
“AI automation may, in time, lower demand for certain digital content creation skills. It may also create new opportunities for roles that require human oversight, creative direction, and technical fluency in AI systems,” the BFI mentions. “Our research identifies a critical shortfall in AI training provision: AI education in the U.K. screen sector is currently more ‘informal’ than ‘formal’, and many workers – particularly freelancers – lack access to resources that would support them to develop skills complementary to AI. However, the U.K. is well-positioned to lead in AI upskilling due to its strong base of AI research institutions, a globally respected creative workforce, and a blending of technology and storytelling expertise.”
 
Recommendation 6 
Public transparency: Drive increased public understanding of AI use in screen content. 
“Surveys reveal that 86 percent of British respondents support clear disclosures when AI is used in media production, and this demand for transparency is echoed by screen sector stakeholders, who call for standards on content provenance and authenticity to counter the rise of AI-generated misinformation and ‘slop’,” the BFI report says. “National institutions such as the BBC are already experimenting with fine-tuning AI models to reflect their editorial standards, and the BFI is deploying AI in archival work with a focus on ethical and transparent practices.”
 
Recommendation 7 
Sector adaptation: Boost the U.K.’s strong digital content production sector to adapt and grow. 
“The U.K. boasts a unique convergence of creative excellence and technological innovation, with a track record of integrating emerging technologies into film, TV, and video game production,” according to the BFI. “London is the world’s second-largest hub (after Mumbai) for VFX professionals. Generative AI is already being used across the U.K. screen sector to drive efficiencies, stimulate creativity, and open new storytelling possibilities – from AI-assisted animation (Where the Robots Grow) and visual dubbing (Flawless) to reactive stories and dialogue (Dead Meat). However, surveys identify a lack of AI training and funding opportunities, while parliamentary committees point to fragmented infrastructure and an absence of industry-wide standards that could hinder the continued growth and development of AI-supported creative innovation.”
 
Recommendation 8 
Investment: Unlock investment to propel the U.K.’s high-potential creative technology sector. 
“There is a compelling opportunity and a pressing need for targeted financial support for the U.K.’s creative technology sector,” notes the BFI. “The U.K. is home to global creative technology leaders, including Framestore and Disguise, as well as AI startups. such as Synthesia and Stability. However, the House of Lords has identified a ‘technology scaleup problem’ in the U.K., with limited access to growth capital, poor infrastructure, and a culture of risk aversion acting as barriers to expansion.” The report also highlights that “physical infrastructure is needed.”
 
Recommendation 9 
Independent creation: Empower U.K. creatives to develop AI-supported independent creativity. 
“Generative AI is lowering traditional barriers to entry in the U.K. screen sector – enabling individuals and small teams to realize ambitious creative visions without the need for large budgets or studio backing,” notes the report. “UK-based director Tom Paton describes how AI breaks down barriers that have ‘kept so many creators on the sidelines,’ while the Charismatic consortium, backed by Channel 4 and Aardman Animations, sees the potential of AI ‘to support creators disadvantaged through lack of access to funds or the industry to compete with better funded organizations’.” Concludes the BFI: “By investing in accessible tools, training, and funding for independent creators, and developing market-preferred, ethical AI products, the U.K. can foster a more inclusive and dynamic creative economy where AI enhances, rather than replaces, human imagination.”