China is building AI video like it built EVs: subsidised rent, computing vouchers and state-backed AI film studios

Katzenberg's 2,377-word essay: 'the tools-versus-no-tools argument is a trap'

Jeffrey Katzenberg's essay on X tells Hollywood to negotiate AI terms of credit, consent and compensation, but it names no rate, license or opt-out and does not disclose his own AI video investments.

Jeffrey Katzenberg posted a roughly 2,400-word essay to X on 23 September, the only post his account has ever made, and its thesis fits in one line: "The tools-versus-no-tools argument is a trap." Hollywood should accept that AI is not going away, he writes, and spend its energy on the terms instead. He asks AI developers to include artists "with credit, with consent, and with compensation," and he is frank that jobs go, citing pit musicians and DreamWorks' own exit from hand-drawn animation.

What the essay does not contain is a single term. There is no rate, no licensing model, no opt-out and no view on work that has already been scraped, because in his own sequencing the fairness debate comes later. It also leaves out his interests: his firm WndrCo invested in the AI video company Reactor and backs the animation tool Cartwheel, and The Information reported on 9 September that he is forming an AI video company with former Sora head Bill Peebles. That report is unconfirmed, and the company has no public name.

In practice, treat his three words as a spec and ask for the numbers: credit that a model actually documents, consent before training rather than an opt-out after it, and a figure per work or per use. The next place those terms get written is animation, where the Animation Guild contract expires on 31 July 2027 with its generative AI priorities, in the guild's own words, "not fully answered."

Higgsfield open-sources ANERNEQ, a 20-minute Arctic drama, with every prompt and asset public

Higgsfield's ANERNEQ notes are a detailed AI filmmaking manual, but no license is stated and the culture they call invented borrows Chukchi words, an Inuit title and a real sacred site with no one credited.

Higgsfield released ANERNEQ, a 20-minute Arctic drama, on 28 September and called it open source, with every prompt and asset public. What it published is a long, candid production manual on its own platform, and no license appears on the page, the film or the launch posts.

The manual is worth your time. Seedance 2.5 generated every shot and every spoken line, Claude wrote each prompt from a custom skill file, and Blender handled previs, the rough 3D blocking done before anything is generated. The rules transfer to any model: write every prompt as if the model has never seen your film, direct with a goal, an obstacle and a tactic instead of emotion words, and cut until the frame looks real. Higgsfield also says that writing dialogue in Cyrillic inside an English prompt stops the model laying English phonetics over the words, a claim nobody outside the company has tested yet.

The notes call the culture on screen a composite and the language invented. The film is set in 1920s Chukotka, home to living Chukchi and Siberian Yupik communities, and several core words match Chukchi dictionary entries. The title is the Inuit word anirniq, "breath; soul", and the sacred Whale Bone Alley is Whale Alley on Yttygran Island, a real ritual site recorded by archaeologists in 1976. No Chukchi, Yupik or Inuit consultant, speaker or adviser is credited anywhere.

In practice, the directing habits are free to take. The believability they produce here came from a real people, and a creator who credits a language speaker or cultural adviser is doing the one thing an 11,961-generation pipeline did not.

Source: Higgsfield project page and launch posts, 28 September 2026.

Marion Cotillard on AI actors: 'for now they act like potatoes'

Marion Cotillard told a San Sebastián press conference that AI actors still act like potatoes, but she named no specific AI film or performer, and her longer answer on spotting AI survives only in Spanish reports.

Marion Cotillard was at San Sebastián on 24 September to promote Nicole Garcia's Milo, a human drama, when someone asked her about AI actors. The Oscar winner answered laughing: "I think I would be very afraid the day I was moved by an AI actor. For now, I find that they act like potatoes, and that reassures me." Acting like a potato is everyday French for stiff, wooden acting.

The wire stopped at the joke, but Spanish outlets in the room carried a longer answer. According to Europa Press, she said she always tries to detect AI, which is still detectable today, and teaches her children to detect it too. She also said AI can be formidable in many trades and only becomes disconcerting when it touches art.

That detection habit is the useful part for anyone building a synthetic performance. The usual debate runs on pixels, and she is describing a viewer who sits down already hunting for the moment the performance breaks. In practice, a generated character needs a specific want, a history and a reason to be on screen, and work that says what it is up front leaves that viewer nothing to catch.

She did not name any AI film or performer, including Tilly Norwood, in any account we read.

Source: AFP and Europa Press reports of the Milo press conference, San Sebastián Film Festival, 24 September 2026. Photo: Harald Krichel, Venice 2026, CC BY-SA 4.0.