AI Greenhouse

Cultivating Responsible Engagement with AI in Filmmaking.

Netherlands Film Academy Research Department at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, supported by cultural partner AIxDESIGN.

The AI Greenhouse at the Netherlands Film Academy nurtures a new conversation about artificial intelligence in filmmaking. At this pivotal moment in creative history, the project explores how AI can enhance rather than diminish human creativity.

As AI-enabled technologies rapidly enter every stage of media production, promising faster and more cost-effective workflows, profound questions emerge that deserve thoughtful exploration. How does AI impact the cognitive processes that make filmmaking so uniquely human? What biases might it reproduce, and how can artistic agency be preserved? How can its environmental footprint be addressed while teaching it responsibly to the next generation of creators?

Inspired by the greenhouse model—a space that embodies care, growth, renewal, and sustainability—this two-year research project creates a collaborative ecosystem where ideas can flourish naturally. The initiative – carried out by two artist-researchers, Nadia Piet and Pablo Nunez Palma, support by AixDesign as partner – uses artistic exploration to forge alternative paths forward, focusing on responsible integration of AI in filmmaking, cultural preservation, interdisciplinary collaboration, public engagement, and sustainable practices.

Between 2025 and 2027, the project will cultivate the AI Almanac: a comprehensive collection of recommendations, tools, best practices, and pedagogical guidelines for ethical and creative AI use in filmmaking. This living resource will grow through four AI Sandbox events featuring public lectures, community discussions, and focused workshops, culminating in an inspiring AI Sandbox Festival.

The AI Greenhouse opens its doors to researchers, filmmakers, visual artists, and technologists eager to experiment and learn together. Participation helps create practical toolkits for the broader filmmaking community while contributing to vital public discourse about technology’s role in creativity.

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Research Group

The Netherlands Film Academy’s Lectoraat nurtures a practice-based research mentality among students, staff and teachers while sharing discoveries with the global film community. We believe research extends beyond academia—it’s a lively, dynamic mindset cultivated through practice. Students, teachers and film professionals are already researching and gaining knowledge in their daily work; we help them recognize, harness and support this process.

Our approach rests on three foundations. First, we cultivate from the ground up, with no predetermined research agenda. Projects grow organically from personal and professional interests within our educational ecosystem, responding directly to our film community’s most relevant challenges. Second, we champion practice-based research through playful experimentation—an invaluable method for producing new knowledge that anyone can engage with, taking artistic, technological or pedagogical forms. Finally, we view research as circular and collaborative, always informing and enhancing teaching, learning and infrastructure within the Film Academy and beyond.

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Project Team

Nadia Piet is a designer, researcher, and organizer exploring the intersection of technology, AI/ML, and (digital) culture. Her work examines how we shape technology and how it shapes us in return, centering participatory, protopian, and feminist approaches. She is the co-founder and creative director of AIxDESIGN – a global community and decentralized research & design lab for critical, creative & community approaches to AI.  

Pablo Núñez Palma is an artist and media researcher, currently a guest fellow at the Netherlands Film Academy and a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. His work examines the intersection of digital technologies, critical making, and co-creation in audiovisual media. His artistic output has been showcased at notable venues, including IFFR and IDFA. Currently, he focuses on using generative AI to enhance creative writing and develop new human-machine co-creation approaches. He is also creating Film Concierge AI, a tool to help small audiovisual archives retrieve content through natural language queries, improving accessibility to cultural heritage.

Mieke Bernink has been Lector / Head of Research at the Netherlands Film Academy since 2008, where she founded and led the international Master’s programme “Artistic Research in and through Cinema” until 2021. Her work focuses on artistic research and pedagogy, creating possibilities for makers, teachers and students to develop their practices as research. She also heads the Artist in Residence programme at Amsterdam University of the Arts. Previously, she served as policy advisor for film and media education at the Netherlands Council for Culture and began her career as chief editor of Dutch film journal Skrien. She studied philosophy and psychology.

Stanislaw Liguzinski is Research Coordinator at the Netherlands Film Academy’s Lectoraat. With degrees in media, film, critical theory and the Master Artistic Research in and through Cinema, he combines practice and theory to develop credible forms of practice-based research in film, XR and videographic thinking. Stan also serves as head VR programmer of Imagine Film Festival and co-director of the Essay Film Studio of Łódź Film School. He has written for various media outlets, edited journals, and curated programs and XR experiences for international film festivals and cultural institutions. His VR project ROAMance has been shown at various international festivals.

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