AI Artist in Hollywood Shares How Creatives Can Thrive with AI Tools

As an AI artist working in Hollywood, I’ve seen firsthand how the industry is evolving—and how creatives can not only survive but thrive in this new landscape. My name is Minta Carlson, and I go by Araminta K professionally. I’m a senior creative AI architect at Moonvalley, the company behind Asteria Film Co., an AI-powered film studio co-founded by Natasha Lyonne and Bryn Mooser. We recently raised $84 million, and our mission is to build ethical, artist-driven AI tools that enhance storytelling—not replace it. My journey wasn’t traditional. I studied theater and playwriting, then worked as a graphic designer. I taught myself how to train AI models—what we call “fine-tuning”—because I wasn’t satisfied with the results I was getting from off-the-shelf tools. The key insight? AI doesn’t create on its own. It reflects what it’s been taught. If you want a specific dragon in a film, you don’t just prompt “dragon.” You train the model with 20 to 30 carefully chosen images or videos that capture its exact look, movement, and personality—close-ups, wide shots, how it reacts to light, how it flies. That’s where the artist’s vision comes in. Now, I work on animated shorts in-house and collaborate with studios on visual effects, background design, and even resurrecting scenes that were cut due to budget. One recent project involved enhancing a party scene that had been scrapped. Using AI, we recreated it in a way that felt authentic and cost-effective—something that would’ve been impossible with traditional methods alone. What I’ve learned is this: technical skill is just the beginning. The real challenge isn’t learning how to use AI—it’s knowing how to guide it. That means having a strong artistic eye, taste, and the ability to communicate visual ideas clearly. I’ve worked with people who have no art background, and while they can learn the tools quickly, they often struggle with the nuance of what makes a good image or animation. It takes time and experience to understand how composition, lighting, and motion work together. I’ve seen the fear—artists worried AI will take their jobs. But in my experience, the opposite is true. AI isn’t replacing artists; it’s freeing them. It handles repetitive tasks, speeds up workflows, and allows creators to experiment faster. I’ve never been involved in a project where we weren’t working directly with a director, concept artist, or creative lead. The human touch is irreplaceable. For anyone in Hollywood looking to adapt, my advice is simple: don’t try every tool. Focus on a problem—like animating a character’s walk cycle or generating multiple angles of a scene—and test solutions that fit. Use platforms like Replicate or Fal to explore open-source models. And above all, keep your creativity sharp. Don’t just draw the same character a million times. Draw a million different ones. Build a visual vocabulary. That’s what AI needs to learn from. The future of Hollywood isn’t human vs. machine. It’s human + machine. And artists aren’t just part of that future—they’re leading it.