Before that moment, artists mixed pigments painstakingly by hand, tethered to their studios. Creativity was bound by logistics. The tube freed them. Suddenly, they could carry their medium outdoors, capturing light, atmosphere, and fleeting human moments directly from the world around them. From that freedom, Impressionism was born, a movement initially dismissed, but eventually celebrated as a revolution in how humanity saw itself and its environment.

Generative AI stands at a similar inflection point for film and media. It is our “paint tube” moment.

For over a century, filmmaking has been bounded by capital intensity: the need for cameras, crews, locations, editing suites, and distribution pipelines. The creative vision was vast, but the tools to realize it were expensive, centralized, and exclusive. Generative AI is dismantling those boundaries in real time. It allows creators — from independent filmmakers to major studios — to experiment with visual storytelling at conceivably a fraction of the cost, accelerating ideation, pre-visualization, and even production itself.

For investors, this isn’t simply a story of efficiency. It’s a story of new movements. Just as Impressionism redefined what art could be, generative AI will redefine what film is:

• New formats will emerge that blend synthetic and live-action performance.
• New distribution models will thrive as content creation becomes abundant and hyper-personalized.
• New aesthetics will challenge traditional notions of realism, pushing cinema into territories we haven’t yet imagined.

And, just like the Impressionists, early adopters may face skepticism. But history shows us that disruption often looks like folly before it looks like genius.

Venture investors are not betting on a passing trend — their backing the infrastructure of a new creative epoch. The winners will be those who understand that generative AI is not a replacement for human imagination, but a liberation of it.

In 2030, we will likely look back at this moment the way art historians look back at the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris: as the start of a movement that redefined an industry.

The paint tube once expanded the canvas. Generative AI is about to expand the screen.