AI overview
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly impacting the role of production designers in both scripted television and film.
AI-driven tools and assistants are particularly useful when considering digital simulations and pre-vis of sets, helping with 3D modelling, material selection, and even colour palette generation. Production designers in high-end television and film can bring ideas to life quickly and with greater ease. New techniques using AI-based computer vision are also allowing rapid and accurate capture of existing locations, giving production designers the ability to quickly incorporate these into models of the final project.
AI can enhance the efficiency of production design workflows by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. For example, AI tools can generate multiple design variations, assess lighting conditions, and help visualise scenes within different environments. Data analysis tools in AI can evaluate trends, budget constraints, and location logistics, providing insights that support both creative and logistical decisions.
So what is AI?
Put simply, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a goal. It’s an ambition to program machines and software to behave in a way that seems human-like or ‘intelligent’.
Rather than simply obeying instructions, AI systems aim to reason, learn, communicate and make decisions – mimicking the kind of traits we associate with humans.
Before you read further, have a look at the ScreenSkills AI 101 page (also linked in the resources section below).
What are production designers starting to use AI for in 2025?
Script breakdown and visual planning
-
- AI can help break down the script and offer visual cues, like automated generation of thumbnails or colour-coded summaries for each page. In the abstract, this can help give you a sense of the mood, timeline and journey of the narrative in new ways. With more photo-realistic images, it can be useful for quickly identifying repeating sets or finding ways to consolidate locations early on.
Concept development and design visualisation
-
- Rough sketches, notes or mood board scraps can be turned into high-quality images, 3D extrusions, or even animated fly-throughs. This can speed up the process of sharing the vision and facilitate collaboration with directors and other departments before committing to working drawings and the start of construction.
Material and palette suggestions
-
- AI tools can suggest materials, textures or palettes based on the script’s themes or historical references. Useful for locking in a consistent look across sets, props and costumes, especially if you’re working across multiple genres or periods.
Relighting and lighting simulation
-
- Whether you’re building sets or dressing locations, AI can simulate different lighting conditions, natural or practical, to see how things will hold up. It can re-light existing photos to help you test ideas before committing to a design.
Creative archive and image search
-
- Sorts and labels your old reference files, and lets you search them visually (not just by filename or tag). This can speed up the process when you’re trying to remember where you put CAD or images of that “blue-washed brutalist corridor” from three productions back.
Audience impact testing
-
- Some tools can now analyse how colours, compositions or overall production design choices are likely to resonate with the viewers. This can be especially useful on genre-based productions where visual style might be niche or very specific.
On-the-go admin and communication
-
- Keeps tabs on meetings, voice notes and to do lists while you’re out on set. Summarise action points from meetings and can flag missing bits in documents or tidy up a draft when you’ve limited time.
Design iteration under pressure
-
- If the director throws in a new idea or the shoot location changes, you can quickly tweak visualisations or generate options with updated lighting, materials or colours, to collaborate and check the idea works before you say yes.
Problem-solving and negotiation prep
-
- As a second opinion tool, AI helps you rehearse ideas or stress-test design solutions before going into a tight meeting. Can be used to identify cheaper or faster alternatives that might still hit the brief.
Virtual sets and VFX handover
-
- If you’ve built virtual sets or scouted with 3D scans, AI can help refine those into assets for VFX or virtual production workflows — saves on extra builds or second unit pickups.
How is AI limited in helping a production designer?
"Unless you read the script and write it down, the importance doesn't land.”
AI assistants can be a brilliant tool to summarise and help highlight key script points or changes of note. However, digging into the script and understanding it and the implications yourself is still crucial. Rather than replacing your laborious jobs with AI, it’s worth thinking about how they could be made more enjoyable, faster or easier to engage with – perhaps turning text into emotive visuals.
Creating a production design often involves many aspects of collaboration with others, in particular the director and location manager. These kinds of human communications are very difficult for an AI to interact with or manage, crucially, the systems often don’t have access to the important real-time data, and secondly, the previous training data can be very poor. Being able to respond effectively when things don’t go to plan or navigate relationships when personalities are creating conflict means many of these problems and challenges are going to be managed by a human for quite some time.
AI can have a place supporting and enabling this to be even better, and perhaps creating new art forms alongside traditional film and TV. But, ultimately, if we continue to value collaboration, AI is not expected to replace the creative drive or the authentic story and performance.
“Sometimes it’s important to ensure you feature real images in your reference documents. A great way to achieve this is to filter all images in a Google search by filtering out anything made after 2020.”
Preparing for the future as a production designer
To prepare for future advancements, production designers could consider developing a working knowledge of AI-driven tools for 3D modelling, visualisation, and data analysis.
It will be important to keep abreast of developments in virtual production and techniques for automated environment creation, created directly from production designers' concepts and drawings.
Learning how to use AI to catalogue, label and archive your own data, including working drawings, final finished documents, along with images and video of the completed look (both before and after), and in-camera shots. As well as the costings, plans, schedules and timings of production, will enable you to train AI in the future to automate tasks and projects, or assist in providing useful estimates to other departments.
By becoming proficient in AI-enhanced design software and self-hosted AI models, designers can leverage these tools to maximise creative output, custom AI content generation and data security.
Engaging in training through ScreenSkills and other online resources will be valuable for production designers aiming to stay at the forefront of the industry. Production designers who embrace these new technologies will be better equipped to lead projects. Delivering a blend of technical understanding and precision with great creative flair.
Embracing AI in production design
AI brings exciting possibilities to production design, helping designers visualise the imagined, streamline workflows, enhance visual planning, and manage resources effectively. While AI can provide data-driven insights and assist with technical tasks, the creative vision of a production designer, collaborating with others, infusing sets and environments with meaning, atmosphere, and style, remains uniquely human. For those involved in film and high-end TV, AI is a powerful tool for expanding creative possibilities while maintaining control over artistic choices. By adopting AI thoughtfully, production designers can enhance their work and stay at the forefront of an industry where innovation and tradition continually intersect.
Links to other ScreenSkills resources
Discover the production designer job profiles in:
Read the production designer skills checklist
Explore more AI-related training, events and opportunities with ScreenSkills
Read AI 101, an overview of some aspects of AI in the UK film and TV industry