Amazon is quietly building a new kind of movie and television factory, one where artificial intelligence handles much of the tedious work that slows productions and inflates budgets. At the heart of the effort is a dedicated AI Studio inside Amazon MGM Studio, tasked with turning experimental tools into everyday infrastructure for how the company makes scripted entertainment.
The goal is not just to shave a few days off a schedule, but to rewire how shows and films are planned, shot, and finished so Amazon can create more content at lower cost while keeping creative control in human hands. If the strategy works, it could reset expectations across Hollywood about what “production” even means.
Inside Amazon’s AI Studio experiment
At the Amazon MGM Studio, veteran executive Albert Cheng is leading a team that treats artificial intelligence as a core production technology rather than a side project. The group, often described internally as an AI Studio, is charged with developing tools that can be used across Amazon’s entertainment pipeline, from early visual development to final delivery, so that the company can scale film and television production without simply hiring ever larger crews. Cheng’s mandate reflects a broader corporate push at Amazon to embed machine learning into every part of its business, not just retail and cloud services.
Cheng has framed the initiative as a response to what he sees as unsustainable economics in scripted entertainment, arguing that the cost of creating is so high that new technology is needed to keep up with audience demand. Within this structure, the AI Studio is building tools that bridge what Cheng has described as “the last mile” of production, a phrase that nods to Amazon’s logistics heritage while signaling that the focus is on the final, labor intensive stages of getting a show or film ready for viewers. Reporting on the AI Studio’s remit makes clear that the technology is expected to fast track certain processes so Amazon can make more movies and TV shows more efficiently, rather than replace the core creative decisions that define a project.
The “two pizza team” behind the tools
Cheng has said the AI Studio is run like a startup, organized under the “two pizza team” philosophy that Amaz has long used to keep internal groups small and focused. In practice, that means a compact engineering and product staff that can move quickly, experiment with new models, and ship tools directly into live productions without waiting for sprawling committees to sign off. By treating the AI Studio as a nimble unit inside a giant company, Cheng is betting that Amazon can capture the speed of a young tech firm while still drawing on the deep resources of a global streamer and studio.
The team’s work is not happening in isolation. Earlier this year, Amazon signaled that it plans to use AI to speed up TV and film production across its entertainment operations, positioning the AI Studio as a central hub for that effort. Coverage of the initiative notes that the technology is expected to fast track processes so Amazon can scale film and television production, and that the AI Studio is building tools that could be used in the future across a wide range of projects. By aligning the group with long standing corporate principles like the two pizza team model, Cheng is effectively translating Amazon’s tech culture into the language of Hollywood production.
What Amazon’s AI will actually do on set and in post
Amazon’s plans are not limited to abstract research, they are tied to specific pain points that crews face every day. The AI Studio is working on systems that can improve character consistency across shots, a persistent challenge in visual effects and animation where small deviations in a face or costume can break the illusion of a continuous performance. The same tools are being designed to integrate with industry standard creative software so that editors, animators, and designers can call on AI assistance from inside the applications they already use, rather than being forced into unfamiliar workflows. Reporting on the initiative emphasizes that these capabilities are meant to help artists generate and refine sequences at lower cost, not to remove them from the process.
Behind the scenes, the technology is expected to fast track certain processes that have traditionally required large teams and long hours, such as cleaning up shots, matching lighting and color across scenes, or iterating on complex visual ideas. The AI Studio is building tools that bridge the last mile of production, which in practical terms means automating the repetitive parts of post production while leaving key creative calls to directors and showrunners. Accounts of the program describe Amazon as leaning into artificial intelligence to revolutionize film and TV production, with the company positioning these tools as a way to make more ambitious projects viable within the constraints of modern budgets.
Hollywood’s anxieties and Amazon’s assurances
Amazon’s push comes at a moment when Hollywood is intensely focused on the risks and rewards of generative AI. Earlier this year, coverage of the company’s plans noted that Amazon intends to use artificial intelligence to accelerate production processes, even as actors and writers raise concerns about how such tools might affect their livelihoods. One report framed the development within a broader news cycle that also included World Cancer Day, the Epstein Files, and Artificial Intelligence, and highlighted that the story was Published with a reference to the number 34, underscoring how AI in entertainment is now part of a much larger public conversation about technology and power. Cheng has been quoted addressing actors’ concerns directly, signaling that Amazon knows it must manage not just technical deployment but also labor relations and public perception.
The broader creative community is already wrestling with similar questions. Naturally, there is some fear and uncertainty among digital content creators that AI could make their jobs obsolete, and debates have intensified around training data, ownership of the models, and artist compensation. Analysts looking at tools like Adobe’s Firefly have argued for a human driven approach to generative AI, where technology augments rather than replaces creative work, and those same arguments are now being applied to Amazon’s entertainment strategy. By positioning its AI Studio as a partner to writers, directors, and animators rather than a substitute, Amazon is trying to align itself with a vision of AI that supports human creativity while still delivering the efficiency gains its business demands.
A new production model with industry wide implications
Amazon is set to revolutionize the film and TV industry by incorporating artificial intelligence to expedite production processes, and the company’s entertainment arm is already being cited as a leading example of how large studios might use these tools. Reports on the initiative describe Amazon as leaning into AI to reshape how projects move from concept to screen, with the AI Studio’s work on character consistency, last mile workflows, and integration with creative software all pointing toward a more automated, data driven production model. The company’s broader ecosystem, which spans retail, cloud computing, and streaming, gives it a unique vantage point to deploy these capabilities at scale and to feed insights from one part of the business into another.
At the same time, the details emerging from Amazon’s AI Studio show that the company is trying to balance aggressive innovation with a recognition of creative and labor concerns. Coverage of the program notes that Amazon plans to use AI to speed up TV and film production while still relying on a smaller creative and business contingent to guide projects, and that the AI Studio is being built to integrate with existing industry tools rather than replace them outright. As other studios watch how this experiment unfolds, the choices Cheng and his team make about transparency, collaboration with artists, and the boundaries of automation are likely to influence not just Amazon’s slate, but the norms that govern how movies and television are made across the industry.
