GenAI Compass

Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg’s Carl Laemmle Institut (CLI) and Filmakademie's AI Officer (Nira Bozkurt) have brought to life the project “GenAI Compass” to do justice to the current urgent demand for a well-founded and practical basis for decision making in the use of generative AI. During its one-year runtime, the GenAI Compass will execute a systematic and sound evaluation of current and potential new GenAI tools for image and video generation under production conditions of the creative industries. The project is lead by the CLI. Nira Bozkurt co-initiated and conceptualized the GenAI Compass and drafted the methodology. Film/XR Director and Creative Technologist Andreas Dahn will coordinate the GenAI Compass for the CLI. The project is supported with funding from the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Skilled Crafts and Tourism.

Objectives

The GenAI Compass addresses three strategic dimensions: the tools’ technological qualitative performance, their legal risk profiles for commercial productions in Germany/EU as well as the critical question about digital sovereignty - i.e. where data flow, how potentially employs creatives’ work for continued training of the AI models and which dependencies develop from choice of infrastructure.

Project results will be published in a white-paper with completely documented and reproducible methodology so that the evaluation stays repeatable and up-to-date. This is necessary beyond the time frame of the project, regarding the current dynamics in the field - with new models that could fundamentally shift the state of potential within weeks. To allow for quick access to the results, additionally an interactive web application is planned in cooperation with MFG Kreativ and project CyberLĂ„ND. This should be relevant for end users.

Target Group

GenAI Compass’ target group on the one hand lies within the diverse production workflows of media industries such as film, animation, VFX, XR and games - but on the other hand also beyond these within anyone impacted by the use of image and video generation who is employing (or planning on doing so) visual content in their work - SMEs, public administration, educational instutions and the federal state’s industry in general.

Consequently, the funding of this project does not only support one specific industry branch but is to be seen as a basis for decision making across economic sectors for a sovereign, legally safe and innovation oriented use of generative image and video technologies for Baden-WĂĽrttemberg.

Job Openings: GenAI Artists

To ensure a wide diversity of input, we are looking for GenAI Artists who will perform evaluations under real production conditions within a freelance service contract. This work package will probably be executed from Q4 2026 to Q1 2027. The framework for these evaluations will be narrative and visual references. The Artists’ role lies in the connection of prompting, reference material, model parameters, iterations and potentially post production work. If you are interested, please contact us with references of AI relevant proof of work at: research@filmakademie.de

Criteria for eligibility:

 

  • proven professional experience with AI image and video generation workflows
  • proven practical experience in film, animation, VFX, XR, games, advertisement or visual media production
  • capability to comprehensibly document workflows
  • experience with at least one of the relevant categories: proprietary cloud tools or local pipelines/ComfyUI or node-based workflows
  • willingness to work according to prescribed evaluation protocol and to grant maximum transparency of employed workflows in the context of the project