Selassie Ibrahim: 'AI could push many filmmakers out of business'

Veteran Ghanaian actress and Regal Film Festival and Awards (REFFA) founder Selassie Ibrahim warned on Monday, November 9, that the rise of artificial intelligence in filmmaking could push many industry players out of business.

In an interview on AI in film, the Smarttys Management and Production CEO said the speed of AI-driven production threatens crew members and directors across the Ghana movie industry who lack the technical training or money to keep up.

"For me, it's very alarming. It's very worrisome because it might throw a lot of people out of business," Ibrahim said.

"It's not everybody who is technologically inclined to use AI. So if you don't have what it takes to use AI, it means you're going to be out of business, which is very worrying," she added.

Still, the producer—who made her screen debut in the 1990s classic *My Sweetie* before producing *The CEO*, *Entrapped* and *The Miser* and hosting REFFA's maiden awards night in December 2025—acknowledged that independent filmmakers cannot simply wish the tools away.

"It breaks my heart, but that is what technology has brought to us. So we just have to up our game," she said, urging practitioners to upgrade their digital skills.

Asked whether AI-generated films are ready to carry African stories into international film festivals, Ibrahim was unconvinced. Current AI platforms, she argued, still struggle to synchronise character movements with dialogue or hold visual continuity across scenes, making them unsuitable for festival-grade African cinema right now.

Her warning lands in a week she also told Joy FM's *Showbiz A-Z* that Ghanaian producers are struggling to recover cinema budgets compared with Nollywood's home crowd, even as AI pressure reaches Ghanaian creatives across music and film.

Ibrahim believes the tools will improve if African creators push for better representation, and bets audiences will still show up for human-made storytelling. Would you pay cinema prices for an AI-generated Ghanaian movie if the lip-sync still glitches?