Before CES kicks off another year of innovation next week, there’s still time to take stock of 2025, which can objectively be called the Year of AI.
The technology spurred billions in corporate spending, pushed the stock market to record levels and prompted rampant speculation about a bubble. For Hollywood in particular, the year’s events prompted the biggest reckoning yet with AI, which permeated the industry with the promise of efficiency and new artistic horizons but also threats to longstanding business practices.
Deadline’s ranking of the top 10 AI stories of the year spans the financial, creative and tech sectors and covers everything from talent disruptions to dealmaking, corporate battles to union strategies. Subscribers to our twice-monthly TechLine newsletter already are acquainted with many of these happenings – sign up here to keep current. Rendering, a regular column by Deadline International Investigations Editor Jake Kanter, also explores new AI developments. (Find previous editions of the column here.)
Generative AI video models already were known to be a force for Hollywood to reckon with, but the release of OpenAI’s Sora 2 last fall upped the ante because of its technological sophistication and implications for copyrighted work. Initially, the company told copyright holders they would have to proactively opt out if they wanted their works to be excluded. As the model hit the public, though, videos featuring Martin Luther King Jr. and Bryan Cranston drew initial backlash, leading to some modifications. At the same time, though, there was a growing sense in the industry that the genie was not about to return to the bottle. Which leads us to our No. 2 story of the year ….
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In a deal that brought to mind the old Bill Murray line from Ghostbusters — “Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria!” — the media giant and the well-funded startup agreed on a landmark exchange inDecember. After initially refusing to take part in the Sora 2 rollout, Disney then decided to allow several of its characters to be used in the generative AI videos and also paid $1 billion for an equity stake in OpenAI. The agreement ultimately could prove more symbolic than tangibly meaningful, but it sent a signal that entertainment companies and IP holders seem to be getting more pragmatic about the AI threat. With proper guardrails and financial incentives, many stakeholders appear willing to sit down at the bargaining table with the very companies they have threatened to sue.
RELATED: Disney’s OpenAI Deal: Soulless Exploitation Or Necessary Innovation? Former Mouse House Animators Have Thoughts
For a “star” who doesn’t actually exist in human form, Tilly Norwood generated more buzz than a squad of Taylor Swifts. Created by actor and technologist Eline Van der Velden and introduced during a Deadline-moderated panel at last fall’s Zurich Summit, Tilly soon was pursued for potential representation by real-life agents, Deadline was assured. Whether or not she gets signed for representation, Tilly’s “girl-next-door authenticity,” as Van der Velden put it, was achieved without any of the hair-and-makeup hassles of human performers. That efficiency one day could tempt some cash-strapped producers – and in fact, most entertainment companies are quietly experimenting with generative AI, Van der Velden asserted. It was no surprise, then, that SAG-AFTRA and a number of other major Hollywood entities issued strongly worded statements against a Till-ified future.
RELATED: Tilly Norwood Creator Eline Van Der Velden Talks Backlash, Reveals Another 40 AI Actors Are In The Pipeline & Explains Why They Will Never Replace Real Actors
China-based DeepSeek hit the broader radar in January when it was revealed that the company spent less than $6 million to train its AI models — a fraction of the hundreds of billions being shoveled into the furnace by U.S. firms. It quickly topped the app store download charts as the public rushed to see for itself what the company was building. The idea of a China-based AI company having better technology and more favorable economics than Big Tech sent shivers through the U.S. financial community. The Nasdaq fell 3% and companies like Nvidia and Alphabet saw their valuations shaved. By year-end, DeepSeek remained a threat even though it has left the headlines.
5. Start-Up Gold Rush
Emerging companies such as Luma, Promise and Runway, on the larger end of a field of dozens of start-up players in AI entertainment, collectively raised hundreds of millions of dollars, at valuations well into the billions. Bubble? What bubble?
In 2023, the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA both went on strike, staging the first dual walkout in decades, in part due to uncertainty over AI. The theme only has intensified as the major above-the-line unions all get set to negotiate new three-year deals with studios and streamers during the coming months. Copyright law veterans Jonathan Handel and Mishawn Nolan weighed in on a panel at October’s Infinity Festival, offering an unsettling preview. “The way that we’ve always done business can’t be done in the future,” Nolan cautioned. Handel called the arrival of Tilly Norwood and other synthetic performers “a difficult situation” given the lack of any language about synthetic performers in prior contracts.
RELATED: Hollywood’s Big New Labor Pitch: Studios To Offer Guilds’ Health Plans $100M Lifeline In Exchange For Longer Multi-Year Contracts In 2026
7. Creative Differences
As 2025 unfolded, a split developed in the creative community between the “boomers” and the “doomers,” to borrow a phrase from tech writer Karen Hao in her book, Empire of AI. Filmmakers including George Miller and Paul Schrader, plus a number of specialists in animation and visual effects, articulated the upside of AI. Visionaries James Cameron and Reed Hastings joined the boards of leading AI companies. They expressed curiosity and optimism about it marshaling an entirely new set of creative tools. On the other side, dozens of leading directors, writers and actors adopted a firm stance against the growing influence of the technology. None was quite as pointed as Guillermo del Toro. While accepting a Gotham Award in early December, the director said his latest film, Frankenstein, was made “willfully made by humans, for humans.” He punctuated his remarks by yelling, “F*ck AI!”
RELATED: Production Designers Are Worldbuilders For Directors, But 66% Fear Being Replaced By AI
As creatives joust about the best path forward, the UK’s Channel 4 embarked on an experiment that could be called either bold or reckless, depending on one’s point of view. At the end of a documentary called Will AI Take My Job?, the broadcaster revealed that the host of the program had been entirely computer-generated. Execs then said they are planning more AI initiatives.
Hoping to do for AI what The Social Network did for social media, Amazon MGM greenlighted Artificial, whose starry cast is led by Andrew Garfield. Director Luca Guadagnino’s film, which wrapped principal photography in the fall, is said to center on the saga of Sam Altman’s firing and subsequent re-hiring as CEO of OpenAI.
10. Gemini Rising
Once written off as a distant challenger to OpenAI, Google’s primary AI platform Gemini made sizable gains in 2025. The traction helped lift parent company Alphabet’s stock by 65% and triggered what Altman reportedly characterized as a “code red” at OpenAI as the company raced to reassert its dominance. Disney, which now is business partners with OpenAI, fired off a cease-and-desist letter to Google in December over what it said were copyright violations by Gemini, guaranteeing that the derby is far from over. (Deadline parent Penske Media Corp also has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming Gemini has unlawfully repurposed PMC content in its AI summaries.)
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