September 8, 2026
IndieWire's Brian Welk sat on the jury for the Reply AI Film Festival, screening six hours of generative AI short films ahead of the event's showcase in Venice. His reflections offer a grounded look at where AI filmmaking stands today - its recurring patterns, its limitations, and the creative choices that actually stand out.
OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Images 2.5, an updated image generation model designed to produce more personalized and polished results from user inputs like text prompts, sketches, and reference photos. The update focuses on better translating a user's intent into the final output. It represents an incremental but meaningful step forward in how ChatGPT handles visual creation tasks.
Adobe is reworking how video editors access AI generation tools inside Premiere Pro, bringing video, audio, and music generation directly into the editing timeline. The update centers on a new Generative Media tool that lets editors fill gaps in their projects without switching apps or breaking their flow. The underlying generators are not entirely new, but their integration into the timeline is a meaningful shift in how the tools are used in practice.
Blackmagic Design has released DaVinci Resolve 21.1, a substantial update that brings AI assistant integration to the editing workflow alongside more than 100 new tools and controls. The update also expands the software's photo editing capabilities and adds support for a range of new camera formats and log profiles. Python scripting, previously available in the free version, has been moved exclusively to the Studio tier.
