OpenAI has its eyes on Hollywood, and it’s coming strong.

With the debut of its text-to-video tool Sora, the tech giant behind ChatGPT is no longer just flirting with the entertainment industry—it’s officially trying to move in. The company recently screened 11 AI-generated short films at Brain Dead Studios in Los Angeles, as part of its global “Sora Selects” tour. The showcase, which followed a New York event and heads next to Tokyo, included everything from medieval tales to surreal dreamscapes, all created with the help of artificial intelligence.

But while some creatives left buzzing about the tool’s visual magic and accessibility, Black storytellers are left asking a bigger, deeper question: Should we be worried?

When the Storytellers Are Replaced

For generations, Black filmmakers have fought tooth and nail for space in an industry that often shuts us out of the writers’ room, the director’s chair, and the final edit. Now, with AI-generated content gaining traction as a cheaper, faster, and glossier alternative, the doors we’ve only just started pushing open could be slammed shut by machines that know our data—but not our truth.

“I’m most excited for people to walk away with a sense of, ‘Oh my God. These people are so creative. There’s so much that you can do with Sora,’” OpenAI CTO Mira Murati told the Los Angeles Times. But creativity without context is dangerous. When it comes to Black stories, context isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s everything.

One person who knows the stakes well is filmmaker Justice, who is currently developing a television treatment based on lived experience with housing insecurity—a project that not only speaks to structural injustice but seeks to humanize an often overlooked crisis.

She is also the grandchild of Selma Wells, the first Black woman appointed to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. The family legacy includes close connections with political heavyweights like Congresswoman Barbara Jordan and former President George H. W. Bush. Butler understands the power of preserving and telling Black history firsthand—and is wary of letting AI do the job.

“I believe that for any culture to be authentically represented, individuals from that culture should be the ones leading projects focused on their own narratives. This ensures true cultural awareness and authenticity, and this principle is especially important for Black culture.

One of the risks of cultural erasure or misrepresentation is the distortion of history. If we allow our history to be altered or fabricated, it can lead to future generations misunderstanding or overlooking the struggles and triumphs of marginalized groups.”

Algorithms Don’t Know the Blues

Let’s be real: AI doesn’t know the spirituals our grandmothers sang while cooking Sunday dinner. It can’t interpret the side-eyes exchanged at the family cookout or the cadence of a HBCU homecoming step show. AI might be able to simulate the look of Black life—but not the soul of it.

“It is the personal aspects that a writer brings to the work that makes it become alive,” says filmmaker Gordon S. Williams. “Typing prompts, directives, and descriptions into an artificial intelligence platform—the work loses its humanity, its essence, and its soul.”

We’ve seen what happens when others tell our stories without us: they get flattened, reinterpreted, and repackaged through someone else’s lens. The danger here isn’t just bias—it’s erasure. With AI trained on content that disproportionately excludes Black voices, we’re facing a digital reflection that doesn’t see us clearly.

Hollywood continues to struggle with equity in storytelling. According to the 2025 UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report, while while Black, Latine, Asian, Native, and multiracial talent made modest gains in front of the camera, executive roles and storytelling control remain overwhelmingly white. Black creatives are still vastly underrepresented in key decision-making positions—proof that the battle for narrative power is far from over. This isn’t a new fight—it’s just a new battlefield.

A New Form of Gatekeeping

This feels as if it’s not just about technology, but also control. Who gets to tell stories? Who gets funded? Who gets seen? If studios can use AI to create “diverse” content without hiring actual Black creatives, we risk being replaced by proxies—avatars that look like us, but aren’t us.

Add to that the murky legal waters of AI-generated content and intellectual property, and it’s clear that Black artists stand to lose more than just visibility. We could lose ownership of our style, our sound, and our stories—again.

Lamont Pete, Executive Producer at W2D / Asylum Entertainment / Endeavor, sees this threat clearly. “Hollywood has never been great at authentic representation, and now we’re supposed to trust robots to do better?” he said. “Yeah, because algorithms have such a great track record when it comes to bias.”

Pete argued that AI tools trained on decades of biased media will inevitably replicate that same erasure. “If you feed a system decades of Hollywood’s bad habits—whitewashed history, stereotypes, token characters—what do you think it’s going to spit out?”

He also warned that entrusting AI with cultural storytelling is just a high-tech version of an old problem. “Hollywood already loves rewriting history. Now imagine AI, programmed by people who still think The Help was progressive, deciding how to tell Black stories. That’s not progress—that’s digital gentrification.”

While Pete acknowledged that AI can be helpful behind the scenes—fixing continuity errors, crunching analytics, optimizing production budgets—he drew a hard line at storytelling. “The second we let AI define what Blackness looks like on screen, we’re outsourcing culture. And we’ve seen how that turns out—it doesn’t go well.”

His final takeaway? “If you want authentic Black stories, hire Black writers instead of training a machine to imitate them.”

What We’re Not Going to Do Is Panic

We’re not sounding the alarm to say “stop the machines.” We’re saying: we need to shape the machine. That means investing in AI literacy, advocating for ethical storytelling, and demanding seats at the table where these tools are being built.

We need Black engineers coding the systems. Black archivists curating the datasets. Black creators experimenting with the tools while also holding them accountable. We’ve always been the architects of culture—this moment demands we do the same with technology.

The Bottom Line

OpenAI wants to help Hollywood dream. But Black storytellers have always dreamed in color—deep, radiant, soul-filled color. We know how to turn pain into poetry, struggle into screenplays, rhythm into revelation. No matter how advanced the technology gets, it can’t replicate what we do. Not really.

So, should we be worried? Yes—and we should also be ready. Ready to protect our stories, amplify our voices, and make sure that the future of storytelling includes us, not just images of us.

Editor’s note (March 27, 2025): This story was updated to include commentary from Lamont Pete, Executive Producer at W2D/Asylum Entertainment/Endeavor, provided after the original publication.

Cover photo: Should Black People Be Worried About AI Telling Our Stories? / Credit: Igor Omilaev on Unsplash