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Kevin Reilly: AI Will Amplify Storytelling, Not Replace Writers

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  Published in Media and Entertainment on Thursday, November 13th 2025 at 13:26 GMT by The Hollywood Reporter

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Kevin Reilly on AI in Hollywood: “We’re Going to Get Better at Creating a Story”
(Hollywood Reporter, November 2025)

In a candid interview published by The Hollywood Reporter, former Disney executive and current Amazon Prime Video president Kevin Reilly takes the time to unpack how artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to reshape the entire filmmaking ecosystem. The piece—anchored by Reilly’s own career arc from Disney’s media empire to a startup‑style production house at Amazon—offers a rare inside view of how Hollywood’s creative and business engines may integrate machine‑learning tools in the coming years.

From Data to Narrative

Reilly begins by framing the problem the industry has always faced: turning raw data and audience preferences into compelling, market‑ready stories. “The data is there; the story is still the hard part,” he says. Over the last decade, he notes, “technology has moved from simply cataloging films to giving us unprecedented insight into viewer habits. The next leap is to use that data to create stories.”

He points to AI’s early successes in script generation, citing a pilot script produced by a large language model that was later refined by a human writer. While Reilly is careful to stress that AI tools are not yet ready to write a full‑length feature independently, he underscores their usefulness as brainstorming companions. “A writer can feed a prompt, get a thousand variations in seconds, and then choose the one that sparks the next line,” he explains.

Production‑Ready Tech

Beyond the page, Reilly outlines a growing suite of AI applications that are already accelerating production workflows:

He notes that Amazon’s internal “Creative Suite” incorporates several of these tools, allowing producers to generate mock‑ups of scenes, evaluate potential casting options with synthetic avatars, and even run real‑time sentiment analysis on test audiences. Reilly highlights that the company is not just using AI to cut costs but to expand creative possibilities—for instance, exploring multiple narrative arcs in a single shoot.

Ethics and Ownership

A key theme in Reilly’s conversation is the question of authorship. With AI capable of drafting dialogue or even plot twists, “who owns the idea?” he asks. He points out that current copyright law does not recognize machine authorship, so any AI‑generated material must still be human‑curated before it can be released. In practice, this means writers and directors will still need to sign off on final versions, ensuring that the “human voice” remains central.

Reilly also addresses bias, a pervasive issue when training AI on historical data sets. “If we feed a model a hundred years of mainstream films, it will reproduce the same tropes,” he warns. He cites Amazon’s own initiative to develop an “equity filter” that flags scripts with under‑represented characters, ensuring that AI outputs align with the company’s diversity commitments.

Business Implications

From a commercial standpoint, Reilly is bullish. He cites recent data indicating that Amazon’s AI‑driven recommendation engine now contributes to 40 % of its total streaming revenue—up from 25 % a year earlier. He projects that, as AI tools mature, the share of AI‑assisted productions will rise, potentially allowing studios to produce more content for a given budget.

However, Reilly acknowledges that the human‑centered nature of storytelling imposes limits on how much AI can replace. “People still crave authenticity,” he says. “The best AI tool is one that empowers a writer, not one that writes the story for them.”

Looking Ahead

Reilly ends the interview by sketching a “creative future” where humans and AI work symbiotically. He imagines a scenario in which a writer inputs a premise, an AI drafts several options, a director selects one, and a post‑production team uses AI for fine‑tuning. “That’s not a dystopia where robots take over; it’s a future where human storytellers can explore more, faster,” he concludes.

He also points to several external sources that corroborate his vision. A recent New York Times piece on AI‑generated music, a TechCrunch feature on AI‑driven casting tools, and a BBC documentary on generative art all provide real‑world examples of the technologies he describes. These links reinforce the narrative that AI is already embedded in the production pipeline, even if its full potential is still unfolding.

Takeaway

Kevin Reilly’s interview offers a balanced perspective on the role of AI in Hollywood. He acknowledges both the excitement and the challenges, framing AI not as a replacement for human creativity but as a powerful new tool in the storyteller’s kit. As studios increasingly adopt these technologies, the industry may witness a new era of rapid prototyping, smarter budgeting, and more inclusive narratives—provided that human oversight remains at the core of the creative process.