Hollywood's AI shift finds a new center in Culver City

Culver City is positioning itself as a hub for AI-driven media, after its city council on March 9 voted to back AI on the Lot, a Los Angeles-based group promoting the use of artificial intelligence in filmmaking. The move gives a boost to the group's annual conference, set to return in May 2026 as its largest edition yet, and signals the city's ambition to stay at the forefront of a rapidly changing film industry.

Culver City, located in greater Los Angeles but operates as its own city, and its identity is deeply tied to film. Its streets are lined with historically preserved studio buildings, with Sony's animation lot right around the corner. The city's official motto is "The Heart of Screenland." It's the kind of place that has a lot riding on what happens next to the movie business.

"Our idea is to make this the capital of AI film," said Mike Gioia, co-founder of AI on the Lot. "Culver City specifically. The film industry is changing, obviously. But Culver City really wants to stay relevant, they want to bring in money and they value being the center of the film industry. So we think we can help with that."

AI on the Lot started in 2023, right as AI was becoming one of the most charged topics in Hollywood. The Writers Guild of America had just gone on strike and AI had turned into a flashpoint – a symbol, for many, of an industry that was willing to replace human creativity with software. Against that backdrop, Gioia and co-founders Ian Eck and Todd Terrazas staged their first conference around a pretty simple idea: get the people who were actually working with AI – filmmakers, VFX artists, tech companies, researchers from MIT – into the same room and let them talk. 

"These were disparate, disconnected groups that never talked to each other," Gioia said. "We brought them together under the umbrella of this conference." Six hundred people showed up that first year. By the third, the lineup included speakers from Amazon Studios, Netflix and major VFX houses.

Gioia argues that while streaming disrupted film distribution, AI is now democratizing production. "A kid in a basement will be able to make stuff with so much more production value," he said, "because they can film themselves and then throw it into an AI and create an animated sequence." They call it "democratized filmmaking" – and the barriers between a first-time creator and a studio-backed production are coming down faster than the industry is ready for.

But Gioia's thinking doesn't stop at who gets to make things. He's also thinking about what happens when everyone can. "What do you do when there are eight billion shows?" he asked. "Hollywood has always been a gatekeeper, but they also ensured quality. If you go to HBO, you know you'll see something good because HBO only has eight shows. We need some new system for curation. That's a genuinely hard problem."

The name AI on the Lot is a nod to the movie studio lot – the place where production actually happens. The founders wanted to build something that felt native to that world, not imported from Silicon Valley.

Ian Eck, who has a background in product design, thinks the implications of AI go beyond just making production cheaper or faster. "The coolest part about AI media is that it's dynamic, reactive, probabilistic," he said. "It doesn't have to be set in stone. That points to media that is non-linear – more like a game, more interactive. Your experience is not the same as your friend's experience with a piece of media." That's a significant departure from how movies and television have always worked – one version, fixed, distributed to everyone.

Fil Graniczny, who came on board in the organization's second year and has produced more than 500 events in his career, compares what they're building in Culver City to South by Southwest – the festival that turned Austin into a destination for the music and tech industries. "The key idea is truly turning Culver City into an AI media tech hub," he said. "A citywide, week-long event. Tens of thousands of people coming through."

City backing gives AI on the Lot something it hasn't had before: official legitimacy and room to grow. For Gioia, the point is straightforward. "It's all about legitimizing AI," he said. "Getting AI film studios to move here, bringing economic impact into Culver City, making this the place where the future of film actually gets built."

The March 9 vote was, in that sense, less about one conference and more about which city wants to own this moment – and a sign that Culver City has made its bet.