The Loudest Anti-AI Critics Went Silent When the Money Showed Up

In January 2026, Scarlett Johansson, Cate Blanchett, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, and roughly 700 other Hollywood figures signed an open letter accusing big tech of "stealing" copyrighted work to train AI platforms, according to Page Six.

Fast forward to Cannes. Same stars. Different tune.

Blanchett and Tilda Swinton addressed AI only "vaguely," according to Page Six. Hacks star Hannah Einbinder — who called AI creators "losers" and "not artists" just weeks before — won the Queer Palm for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and said NOTHING about AI at the festival. Not a word.

One film executive told Page Six the Hollywood attitude shift was flat-out "hypocritical." Another said that whenever AI came up, "people were walking on eggshells."

Seven hundred signatures on a public letter. Zero pushback at the biggest film festival on the planet.

The Agents Were Already Making Deals

While clients were quietly wringing their hands in public, their agents were actively seeking deals with AI companies behind the scenes, according to Page Six sources.

The moral outrage had always had a market cap. The moment the AI companies showed up with real money, the resistance evaporated. Hollywood's principles turned out to be negotiable.

Tech Giants Filled the Vacuum Hollywood Left

Major studios essentially skipped Cannes 2026. According to the Hollywood Reporter, there was not a single studio film on the main red carpet. The biggest Hollywood moment of the festival was a midnight anniversary screening of The Fast and the Furious — a movie from 2001.

NBCUniversal's Donna Langley attended only for that screening. Sony Pictures' Sanford Panitch gave a keynote — that was it for major studio brass, per Page Six.

Christopher Nolan (The Odyssey) and Steven Spielberg (Disclosure Day) both had films in production and skipped entirely, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Part of this is economic reality. The Euro jumped 6% against the dollar over the past 12 months, according to Page Six. Hotel rooms that typically cost $3,000 a night were going for just over $800 at the last minute. Rival publicists were bunking together in Airbnbs. One buyer screened a film for sale in a one-room apartment near the Cannes bus station while the filmmakers vacated the bedroom.

"Nothing is like the past. Everything has changed," one buyer told Page Six.

AI Companies Moved In Like They Owned the Place — Because They Did

While studios retreated, tech moved in and bought everything in sight.

Meta became an official partner of Cannes 2026 after signing a multi-year deal, according to Page Six. The company sponsored Hollywood Reporter podcast tapings, hosted panels inside the Majestic hotel, and had an "entire legion" of brass on the ground.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei attended. OpenAI VP of Global Creative Partnerships Charles Porch was there. Anthropic bankrolled Graydon Carter's Hotel du Cap party. Meta sponsored the Vanity Fair soirée.

The party circuit told the same story. The best rosé and real food were at tech-sponsored events. Traditional studio parties were "heavy on well liquor and light on food," according to Page Six. At the afterparty for breakout film Club Kid, attendees were chasing unconfirmed rumors of a single tray of burgers.

The Actual Debate — What Little There Was

Director Darren Aronofsky, who runs AI studio Primordial Soup in partnership with Google DeepMind, addressed the "AI for Talent" summit on Cannes beach. He told the audience that "AI is a terrible word" and argued the technology is "purely additive" — a tool, not a replacement, according to The Guardian.

He cited one production where AI tools let filmmakers avoid using a real newborn on set. "None of these movies would exist without this technology," Aronofsky said.

Guillermo del Toro staked out the opposite position, telling The Guardian he would "rather die" than use AI in his work. That's a clear, honest stance — and he deserves credit for sticking to it publicly at the festival, unlike the letter-signers who went silent.

Filmmaker Chuck Russell unveiled two AI-driven sci-fi features from his company Neumorphic AI at a yacht party hosted by generative video platform Higgsfield, per The Guardian. "AI technologies are expanding the cinematic toolbox," Russell said.

The Awards Happened Too

The festival crowned a Palme d'Or to Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's Fjord, starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, about conservative Christianity — a choice that provoked strong reactions, according to Woman Magazine.

Best director was a three-way tie between Pawel Pawlikowski (Fatherland) and Spanish duo Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi (The Black Ball). Barbra Streisand received an honorary Palme but couldn't attend due to a knee injury, accepting via video.

Does any of that matter when the real story is that an industry spent months screaming about AI theft and then sent their agents to cut deals the moment the tech companies rolled into town?

What This Means

Hollywood's AI fight was always partly theater. The studios want leverage in licensing negotiations. The stars want to stay relevant. The public outrage creates bargaining power — and the moment the other side shows up with a checkbook, the outrage finds its price.

Regular people lose either way. The creative workers — the below-the-line crew, the writers, the visual effects artists — don't have agents cutting side deals. They signed those letters in good faith.

Their bosses just cashed out at Cannes.