HI-driven AI explores the partnership between humans and artificial intelligence through conversations with people who use AI in their daily work. Our mission is to understand how AI works as a partner and collaborator, not just another tool.*
These interviews are conducted in the respondent’s preferred language and formatted with AI assistance for clarity and translation. Each respondent reviews and approves the final version before publication, ensuring their perspectives are accurately represented.
Adorján Portik is an award-winning Art Director who worked on the Oscar-winning Dune films, the Apple TV+ series Foundation. Originally from Romania, he divides his time between Berlin and Budapest. Beyond film, Portik is a practicing architect with a patented construction system and a product designer. You can browse his work on his website: www.portikadorjan.com
In this interview, he discusses using ChatGPT in production design and the impact of AI on the film industry.
AI Use Cases in Film Production
Interviewer: What do you use AI for? Can you share some examples?
Adorján: Here are two examples: on a shooting day, we discovered that a letter an actor receives had a trademarked name on it. Production asked me to create two envelopes with a different, unprotected name — changing “Sara Goodfellow” to “Sara Goodwind.” I went down to the graphic designer’s area (she was gone already), photographed the “Goodwind” text, used AI to transform “Goodfellow” into “Goodwind,” printed the envelopes, had the painter age them, and completed multiple copies in about 20 minutes. These were used immediately in a scene where the letter is burned with reshoots.
Another example: The graphic designer created a police shield for a 19th-century carriage, but used 20th-century fonts. I fed it to AI asking for 19th-century fonts. It got the letters mixed up and couldn’t write correctly. On the fifth attempt, I printed it as-is at scale, we cut out the letters with scissors to rearrange them, had the painter age it, mounted it on the carriage, and we were ready to shoot.
Interviewer: This was all ChatGPT?
Adorján: Yes, ChatGPT. The paid subscription — $20/month.
AI’s Impact on Work Habits and Skills
Interviewer: You mentioned AI sometimes leads to laziness or takes over tasks you used to do yourself. Can you give examples?
Adorján: I write letters by hand in a notebook first, then type them into the computer for a second revision, then get a third version improved by AI. I need that work of throwing something out, letting it sit and mature, then refining it. Unfortunately, AI has taken over this process — I just let it come up with a structure.
Also, for official correspondence in different languages — English, German, Romanian — I sometimes use AI to structure letters. It produces a structure that’s better but isn’t me, and I regret that.
Are you afraid you’ll lose certain compositional skills?
Interviewer: It’s a good question. My wife says the same thing — I use AI for things I used to do myself, even for math when helping with her PhD, though that was never successful.
I’m glad I learned to program, glad I programmed for years without AI, but I’m also glad I increasingly don’t have to code and can focus on bigger-picture things. The speed — often the illusion of speed — is like a drug that makes me bullish about this.
As for whether I’m getting dumber, I think I can process much more information now. I can ask Perplexity about things that would have taken months of self-education two years ago. I might not get to the same depth as those months of work, but I can get 50–60% there in days. These are things I simply wouldn’t do without AI.
Adorján: Working with AI operates at a much larger scale and is much more efficient. In emergencies, AI is like having nitro in a car — much faster and more efficient, but risky. But it’s not as beautiful, not like the difference between handwriting and typing on a computer.
This blog is excellent for this — I go to the National Library, there are six floors, a million people working, and when I walk around looking at screens, I see ChatGPT on one out of five. Probably many more use it but minimize the window so others don’t see. Everyone has it, everyone says AI is bad, but everyone has started using it. Like mobile phones — of course it was rude at first, but everyone uses them now. This blog is good for making people aware of what’s really happening.
Things that you should avoid
Interviewer: Can you share examples of the challenges AI brings?
Adorján: I know production designers who use AI in ways I don’t agree with.
There are two Hungarian designers I know who use AI-generated images to pitch for film jobs. Normally, when pitching to a director, you present concept art backed by actual 3D models and renderings — that’s weeks of real design work. But they’re showing up with AI images that look impressive but have no real design work behind them.
It’s deceptive. If you get the job, you still have to do all that design work later. But in film production, they won’t give you extra time to catch up. If there are five sets and each would normally take a week to design properly, that’s a month of missing work. And they won’t give you that month or the budget to hire five people to catch it up.
These two won jobs this way. While I was in Ireland, production called — one of them had been fired and they needed help to fix the mess. I refused because we’d already run out of time and resources. The filming already started, and when you have a crew that costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per day, if the sets aren’t ready, you’re done in the industry.
One of them showed me proudly how he won the job with beautiful AI-generated images. I warned him it was a huge risk — promising things you can’t deliver on your own. He’d have to hire five people to actually design what the AI had pictured.
Interviewer: That’s a fascinating example of the challenges AI brings. Let me ask about your own experiences using AI tools in your work.
AI Limitations and Hallucinations
Interviewer: What’s your biggest failure or problem with AI?
Adorján: Hallucinations really bothered me. I got a speeding ticket in Ireland and asked for a phone number to call. It gave me a number that didn’t work. Gave me another — also didn’t work. I got angry. Turns out it was right — those numbers really were wrong on the website. I eventually found the correct number on the forms they’d physically mailed me. So that was actually my mistake — I assumed it was hallucinating when it was giving me accurate information.
ChatGPT is set up to create illusions — it’s biased toward the user experience. I also notice when they change models to reduce API consumption — it behaves differently, asks more questions before generating. They’re slowing down API usage.
AI in the Film Industry — Critical Perspectives
Interviewer: Can you tell me about the trends or phenomena you’ve seen in the industry regarding AI?
Adorján: There’s a story from Budapest. We were designing a Chinese festival for a film and had set decorators compete to create Chinese masks. Someone came in who far exceeded everyone else. My boss asked if it was AI-generated — yes, it was. The boss said the copyright wouldn’t be theirs but the AI owner’s. The person said they would modify the design.
Eventually we either didn’t modify it or the modification was fake — I don’t know. But they won the job because it was so much better than what the Hungarian decorators created. My boss took the risk because there was pressure from the director. We used AI-generated Chinese masks. I don’t know what I would have done if it was my responsibility.
Interviewer: Are there still copyright concerns or disputes about this in the film industry?
Adorján: From what I know, if AI generates something, you either buy it from the AI owner or modify it. In film, at the beginning — for example with Suno.com for music — if you subscribe, all commercial rights to the generated music are yours.
This was two years ago when they said AI-generated content couldn’t be in films due to copyright. How you own what your subscription generates for personal vs. commercial use is complex. Copyright ownership isn’t simple like “okay, that image is yours.” If I make a film with AI and present it as my production company’s property, they’ll definitely sue me. I don’t believe I can distribute AI-created videos as my own property — that’s impossible.
(There are providers who allow the commercial use of the outputs, for example the suno.com music generator. — editor)
Hollywood Strike and AI Concerns
Interviewer: There was that Hollywood writers’ strike a while back where AI came up. What’s the vibe check in the film world about AI?
Adorján: I don’t know about writers specifically. What I know now: if actors are 3D scanned, AI can make them play anything. If an actor gets sick but is 3D scanned, work can continue while they’re in their room.
I’ve seen examples of this — not with lead actors, but secondary actors and extras.
The big strike was about 3D scanning. Actors feared that if they’re scanned and sign agreements allowing AI to use their image, they’d lose work. It wasn’t just writers in that strike — everyone participated: actors, everyone. They made agreements with producers.
The unions write four-year contracts with producers about wage ranges. The producers signed the agreement. But what happened? The union won, and the films just moved out of America. The entire American film industry is suffering. Half my friends in Hollywood are unemployed because they work so expensively, and producers got tired of waiting and went to South Africa, Europe to make films.
Interviewer: Capital in the film industry has largely moved to streaming, right?
Adorján: Now they make series. Famous actors, no matter how great, won’t do series because there’s no money. They don’t give $100–200 million for films anymore. Instead they make series for $50–60 million, which is much more profitable. Money dominates film so much now — I don’t know how much is still art. Maybe underground…
AI for Administrative Tasks
Interviewer: You mentioned using AI mostly for quick practical tasks on film sets. Do you use it in other areas of your work?
Adorján: Yes, I work on two different tracks. The first is my official film industry work, where I use AI less and mainly for practical emergency tasks — like those envelope and carriage examples I mentioned, things that need to be done in 20 minutes.
The second track is my personal projects — architecture, design work. There, the work community is quite small. I have few colleagues to discuss questions with, and since I work alone, I use AI much more.
I also use AI heavily for administrative tasks across borders. I’m working in different countries constantly, so there’s a lot of bureaucracy:
– Tax returns in Germany: For 2023/2024, I filled out all the forms with AI help, even though I don’t speak German well.
– Building management communications: Translating correspondence with our apartment building management.
– Work permits: Getting A1 forms for working across different countries.
– Irish speeding ticket from Berlin: I got a ticket in Ireland but there was no online payment option, only postal, and I was running out of time. AI helped me handle the correspondence — three rounds of back-and-forth letters. Eventually Revolut was the solution for payment.
Interviewer: Do you use AI for feedback on your work?
Adorján: I use “roast the idea” prompts to get unbiased, strict opinions — especially helpful when you’re working alone and don’t have colleagues to critique your concepts.
General Perception and Adaptation
The whole thing is still very Wild West with AI. Very tough Wild West. The average person knows absolutely nothing about it — just has fantasies.
When I tell someone I’m working on projects involving AI design, they simply think I’m a traitor. The masses are lost — they still think this way.
But I’m certain that those who don’t learn to use AI will be left behind. We shouldn’t be afraid of AI, we just need to keep our sensitivity and our human connections — those are what make our work meaningful. AI is a wonderful tool, but only that — a tool. What matters is how we use it, and the intention behind it.