Lionsgate has made Kathleen Grace its first Chief AI Officer. This is a big step toward using AI in all of Hollywood’s filmmaking. Grace, who used to be the chief strategy officer at the AI platform Vermillio, will now report directly to CEO Jon Feltheimer and be a member of the senior leadership team.
Grace will work with Vice Chairman Michael Burns and other executives to give filmmakers AI tools that help them realize their creative ideas. Her job is to make production, marketing, distribution, and administration more efficient while also protecting the studio’s intellectual property and partnerships with talent. This puts Lionsgate at the top of the list when it comes to using AI, even though there are still debates in the industry about what technology should do.
Grace has experience from Vermillio, where she worked on licensing and protecting IP and likenesses in AI applications. Lionsgate’s decision comes after it teamed up with AI company Runway in September 2024 to train a proprietary model on its library of movies and TV shows, which includes franchises like The Hunger Games and John Wick. Feltheimer, the CEO, praised her for knowing how AI affects creators and IP holders, and for trying to make opportunities and protect them.
This appointment shows that Hollywood is quickly adopting generative AI to make content more cheaply, which could save millions of dollars in areas like storyboarding. As studios figure out how to deal with AI’s potential to disrupt things, Lionsgate is the first to set up formal executive oversight for its ethical and creative use.
