SeeDance IP Bingo, Figma's Free-Fall, and Disney's Disappearing Visual Team
... still wondering if robots have celluloid dreams.
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Edited by Elizabeth Kealoha. Pod + Images by Ant Neely.
Sunday Edition
It was a week of big moves and bigger questions. Claude shipped something that knocked 20% off Figma's stock in 20 minutes. Disney/Marvel laid off 1,000 people — mostly women — on their visual team, kicking off a long-overdue conversation about who's actually getting displaced. SeeDance 2.0 kept generating videos that nobody technically owns. Doug Liman started shooting an AI-first thriller with Gal Gadot. And Gossip Goblin gave us the cleanest AI-first IP drop we've seen yet.
Let’s get into it.
THIS WEEK IN ‘COMMUNITY’
Anthropic Just Ate Figma's Lunch (in 20 Minutes)
Claude shipped a design-share feature this week, and Figma's stock dropped 20% in 20 minutes. Minh called it exactly: "Anthropic eating everyone alive." The thread turned into a bigger question — is Anthropic actually building the console, not an assistant? Figma acquired Weavy, Anthropic's CPO left Figma's board, and Minh predicted a node-based workflow natively in Claude within six months.
[BASECAMP]
SeeDance IP Bingo, Starring: A Copyright Lawyer
Mike OverJK played what he christened "SeeDance IP Bingo" — generating scenes about AI breaking copyright using SeeDance 2.0. The highlight: a 70mm-lens lawyer, full confidence, delivering the line "Let me stop you for a minute. A prompt is not authorship." Mike's kicker on SeeDance's fine print: "I love how SeeDance added 'You don't own the output.'" It landed the same week Rob Tercek's essay "Hollywood Is a Plagiarism Machine" was making rounds — Jennifer called it "definitely worth a read" for its distinction between mimicry and visual quoting.
[BASECAMP]
Disney Layoffs and the Women-in-AI Conversation
Disney/Marvel laid off 1,000 people on their visual team — mostly women, per Stina. Monica opened the floor: "Are we ready to have the conversation about women in AI?" What followed was the most substantive debate of the week. Brogan argued that PM, HR, and creative-management roles (disproportionately held by women) are next on the automation chopping block. Stina pushed back, citing McKinsey data showing men still hold 80% of C-suite seats in media/entertainment, and called the framing itself a choice:
“When the guy building the tools tells you whose jobs they'll take, that's not a prediction. That's a plan.”
[BASECAMP]
Hollywood's Split Screen: Liman's AI Thriller vs. Gossip Goblin
Two moments captured the bifurcation this week. On one side: Doug Liman's AI-first Bitcoin/Satoshi thriller starring Gal Gadot and Casey Affleck, with some MC folks reportedly on the project. Fred framed the stakes: "I think this film if successful is another Ben Affleck type moment for Hollywood adoption." On the other: Zack London's cyberpunk-noir Gossip Goblin dropped to near-universal praise for world-building — Bay called it "incredible" — with a merch store already live and Fred floating a GenTalks ask.
[BASECAMP]
What It Actually Costs to Ship with SeeDance 2.0
While SeeDance IP Bingo was being played over in Basecamp, Cheikh Rôõney posted a full teardown of his SeeDance 2.0 action short in WeLoveRobots — the receipts version. His pipeline: Freepik for assets, Gemini Pro for the script layout, NanoBanana Pro for image staging, ChatGPT for the timeline breakdown, SeeDance for animation and dialogue, Premiere for the edit. Cost: about $45. His satisfaction on dialogue and acting: 70%, which he called “already a strong performance.” When a member asked how to budget a wolf short film before diving in, Cheikh walked him through the whole workflow. His sign-off:
“The real question is no longer ‘Can AI do this?’ but ‘What can we create with it?’”
[WELOVEROBOTS]
FlikAI Crashes GenTalks, Community Dives In
FlikAI was the GenTalks feature on Wednesday, and the community dove in hard. Minh dropped the FLIKMACHINE10 redeem code; Michelle, Bay, and others immediately started testing the agentic workflow and posting results. Bay got hooked: "NGL. I'm kind of flying with the Flik tool." The deeper question was about the interface layer — Kenny announced he's "crossed over into MCP land," and Minh mused that we may be one or two model updates away from TikTok-filter-style prepackaged creative flows hitting AI video at scale.
[BASECAMP]
🏆 COMMUNITY WINS
A lot of MC folks out in the world this week.
Monica Monique, Brogan Wassell & Bernie Su — Speaking at the Global AI Cinema Summit
Ia Ayame Robinson & Jason H. — Packed-house panel at NVIDIA GTC
Ari Kuschnir — Debuted a three-screen TED-style installation on “what makes us human”
Lisa Russell — AI Film Radar launching via Google for Startups (ArtsEnvoy.ai/radar)
Leonardo — First peer-reviewed publication accepted (images-to-slides, ACM proceedings)
Leonid Krykhtin — Released an updated, fully interactive AI filmmaking workflow diagram
Festivals and Screenings…
Altera Festival — An Alt Era of Storytelling
Altera Festival submissions are closing soon! 🎟️ Our community gets 50% off submission fees this week only, code Machine50 → Submit via FilmFreeway
Story-first work made with emerging tech tools.
Accepted formats:
Narrative Short
Documentary Short
Experimental / Hybrid
Commercial / Branded / Trailer
Music Video
Immersive / XR / Experience
Vertical (9:16 native)
WORKS-IN-PROGRESS ARE ELIGIBLE, so if your project is close but not finished... ship it anyway!
Also open for submissions:
Austin AI Film Fest — opens 4/15
TED AI Vienna — submissions open
Screening: AM I? - A film exploring our AI systems & consciousness📍 Sound City Studios 📅 Tuesday evening (4/21) → RSVP
EVENTS & MEETUPS
Alibaba Cloud SME AI Growth Day Vietnam 2026 📍 Ho Chi Minh City 📅 April 22 → Sign up
Cannes AI meetup →RSVP
🔗 This Week’s Link Drops
Industry News
Disney and Marvel lay off 1,000 on visual team — Yahoo Finance
Doug Liman’s AI movie with Gal Gadot & Casey Affleck — The Wrap
Hollywood Is a Plagiarism Machine — Rob Tercek / Substack
Why Art Must Be Unpredictable Against Algorithm Optimization — Francesco D’Isa / Domus
Reese Witherspoon Embraces AI, Encourages Women to join her — Variety
Tools & Tech
Midjourney v8.1 release — X / Midjourney
Alibaba Happy Oyster world model — happyoyster.cn
Automating Workflows with Claude Cowork — AI Tidbits / Rahul
AI Filmmaking
Gossip Goblin cyberpunk short — Zack London / YouTube
Gossip Goblin merch — gossipgoblin.studio
The Patchwright cyberpunk short — YouTube
Perfect Toys opening scene — Christian Luoma / X
Ari Kuschnir’s TED-style installation — Instagram
Worth Watching/Resources
Steven Soderbergh on AI — Variety / X
AI Film Radar waitlist — Lisa Russell’s new venture
SHIP IT ROUGH.
We’re at an odd inflection point. Hollywood is laying off artists while AI filmmakers are building entire IPs from their couches. The platforms are swallowing each other whole, and the copyright lawyers (synthetic and otherwise) are catching up. Somewhere in that noise, the work that actually matters keeps getting made.
Make something this week. Ship it rough.
See you next Sunday.
— Machine Cinema Newsletter
The Disney visual team was not that large! 😂 Those 1,000 layoffs came from various departments