8 AI Companies Doing This the Right Way (and Won’t Get You Sued)
My picks for Hollywood to get behind in 2026 as Big Tech’s shortcuts catch up
I cover the intersection of Hollywood and AI for paid subscribers. I dove into Disney’s deal with OpenAI, how AI search is disrupting Hollywood discovery, what AI performer Tilly Norwood means for actors and how the tech is threatening other jobs across Hollywood.
Here’s the problem with AI brownies.
If someone hands you a brownie and says, “Don’t worry about the ingredients,” your first instinct shouldn’t be whether it tastes good. It should be whether it’s safe — and who’s responsible if it isn’t. You probably won’t get a straight answer. But the brownie looks great, everyone else is eating one, and before long you’ve had the whole tray.
That’s essentially how AI entered Hollywood.
In 2025, the industry embraced tools built by companies that scraped first, scaled fast and dared regulators, guilds and courts to catch up. The land grab happened. Big Tech won the speed round — and studios were left holding tools they may not be able to defend.
Heck, Disney decided to get into bed with Sora 2 even after the OpenAI company behaved very, very badly.
But that doesn’t mean everyone is baking their brownies the same way.
Quietly — and often at a competitive disadvantage — a smaller group of creators and companies is building AI tools that are legally defensible, ethically coherent and creatively intentional. They move slower. They cost more. They don’t demo as well onstage. And they’re competing against tools optimized for speed, spectacle and plausible deniability.
If you’re using AI video tools that make your lawyers nervous, there are alternatives trained entirely on licensed data. If you’re experimenting with generative visuals but don’t want synthetic performances, there are tools that automate the boring parts without touching authorship. And if you’re worried about voices, faces and style being ripped off at scale, there are systems designed to stop that before it becomes a lawsuit.
Today I’m recommending these eight AI tools trying to replace Hollywood’s junk-food phase with something defensible (both legally and morally):
