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OpenAI last week launched Sora 2, an artificial intelligence model that can generate high-definition video clips with sound and more realistic physics. The release has been described by the company as a turning point for AI-video generation.
Halfway across the world, Indonesia’s film industry is already transforming due to AI tools such as Sora, Runway, Midjourney, Google’s Veo, and ChatGPT. Entertainment companies and filmmakers are using AI to become more efficient and generate ambitious, high-quality movies on smaller budgets, which they couldn’t have done previously.
“Indonesia is now at the tipping point as we’ve got all the access to AI,” Bisma Fabio Santabudi, a film and animation lecturer at the Multimedia Nusantara University in South Tangerang, told Rest of World. “Sora 2 can unlock broader potential for Indonesia’s creative workers to experiment more extensively without being constrained by high costs.”
At the same time, creatives ranging from storyboarders to scriptwriters and visual effects artists are losing their jobs to AI, Santabudi said.
Indonesia has a thriving film and animation sector, whose creatives serve both Hollywood and a growing domestic film industry. Local box office sales exceeded $400 million in 2023, the most recent data available, making the nation the fastest growing market in Southeast Asia. Recognizing the potential, Netflix has invested in local content to reach more Indonesians.
About 40,000 Indonesians worked in the sector in 2020, according to the latest data available, and they are fast adopting generative AI. Workers told Rest of World they use ChatGPT for scripting, Midjourney to produce images, and Runway to generate short videos for storyboarding and editing.
With Sora 2, it is possible to make realistic-looking clips with synchronized sound that are up to a minute long. These outputs could be used for storyboarding and preproduction, Santabudi said. The model was likely trained on movies, TV shows, and other copyrighted material, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.
Amilio Garcia Leonard, a VFX artist who works on Hollywood productions, began using AI tools a few months ago. He uses them to create a draft version of the final visual-effects edit, which now takes 70% less time, he said.
“We should not avoid AI. We befriend AI to maximize our basic skills, to speed up and augment our work,” he told Rest of World.
Maximillian Budihardjo, a VFX artist at Visualizm, a post-production studio in Jakarta, uses AI for first edits, he told Rest of World. He “touches up” the edit to make it perfect, he said. VFX is particularly vulnerable to automation as some tasks are labor intensive, rules-based, and repetitive.
“AI tools are a companion, an assistant to improve my workflow,” he said. “I don’t want to use AI 100% in my work.”
That’s because the use of AI is considered taboo by many filmmakers, he said. AI images sometimes “don’t make sense” and are easy to spot because characters appear so perfect their skin lacks pores, he said.
AI productions are already hitting screens globally. For Secret Invasion, a sci-fi show on Disney+, Marvel Studios used AI for the opening credits. VFX artists for Netflix’s The Eternaut used AI to create the final footage of the collapse of a building. OpenAI’s tech is being used to generate a feature-length animation film called Critterz, to be released next May. The movie’s $30 million budget and nine months’ timeline is a fraction of the four years and the estimated $200 million it cost Pixar to make Toy Story 3.
About 204,000 entertainment jobs in Hollywood will likely be disrupted by generative AI by 2026, according to estimates from the Concept Art Association and the Animation Guild.
The Indonesian Film Producer Association, which represents local creatives, supports the use of AI, chairperson Agung Sentausa told Rest of World. It will cut the costs of production, and make it possible to make films that match the quality of Hollywood, he said. Currently, the budget of an Indonesian film is about 10 billion rupiah ($602,500), less than 1% of a big Hollywood movie.
“Our film industry is open to convenience offered by AI,” Sentausa said.
Indonesia’s filmmakers are experimenting with AI, producing short films such as Nusantara, awarded best documentary at an European AI-film showcase this year. Using AI, the film depicts epic battles fought by a legendary military leader in 14th century Indonesia.
The first Bali AI International Festival was held this year, with 25 submissions from around the world, Ben Makinen, an American filmmaker and festival organizer, told Rest of World. AI is improving so rapidly that a second iteration was held just months later, with 86 submissions, Makinen said.
“AI filmmakers are challenged to learn. They still have to see what makes a good director, what makes a good editor,” said Makinen. The best AI filmmakers are still traditionally trained, he said.
A trailer from the Bali International AI Film Festival 2025, which showcased 44 AI films from 21 countries last month.
A number of roles in production and visual effects are being transformed by AI. Ignatius Krismawan, a VFX artist, said that he has reduced hiring roto artists, who cut objects out of movie frames to generate the usable parts of an image. This can now be done efficiently by AI.
Storyboarding, which involves translating scripts into a sequence of images, is also transforming. Bahrul Ilmi, a storyboard artist, uses AI to draw characters in various positions and angles. But sometimes, the image generator gives him nonsensical results that he can’t use, he told Rest of World.
With advances in AI image and video generation, studios are hiring fewer storyboarders, Wiendy Widasari, a producer at production house Progressinema, told Rest of World.
Scriptwriters are using AI to reduce repetitive work, even as they become endangered due to the rise of ChatGPT. Bayu Kurnia Prasetya, a writer, is usually overwhelmed with work from Indonesia’s highly productive film sector, which produced 285 movies last year.
Prasetya now uses AI to brainstorm, structure ideas, and find typos, finishing in five minutes tasks that used to take five hours. But he said he would not use AI to write because it lacks the human touch.
“[AI films] have no soul at all. They are just too perfect,” Bayu said. “Film is an art. It should have the raw side, emotions expressed by a human being.”
The use of AI in other aspects of filmmaking, such as to replace actors, has sparked controversy globally. Recently, AI production company Particle6 created an AI actor, “Tilly Norwood,” generating criticism from across the industry. The Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists said she was “trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation.”
Voice actors, too, are in trouble. Some tech companies have created AI voice clones, prompting a lawsuit by voice-over artists that the company allegedly stole their voices.
The practice is less controversial in Indonesia, where audio post-production studios are ceasing to hire voice talent, instead using samples they have stored in a database, Krismawan said.
“We then generate [with AI] how deep or light the voice is. But we must pay [the artists] for the timbre of the voice needed,” he said.
Wokcop Studio is beginning to use AI in its workflow to shoot more ambitious action sequences, Franklin Darmadi, the CEO and a movie director, told Rest of World. Just months ago, these scenes would’ve been difficult to realize on limited budgets, he said.
The loss of jobs in Indonesia’s film industry will likely be balanced by the creation of new roles requiring AI-prompt artistry, Santabudi said. His university now offers two courses in AI filmmaking.
Artists are taking note. Storyboarder Ilmi, who has been in the industry since the early 2000s, is planning to upskill. But he believes human skill will eventually become prized.
“I believe that AI-content made instantly and used by many people will reach a saturation point,” he said. “That’s when manual work will have more value than AI.”
