A new question is quietly emerging in Ghana’s entertainment industry: if artificial intelligence can create actors, locations, voices and entire scenes, how much of the human labour currently required to make a film will remain necessary?
The question is no longer theoretical. Generative AI is already being used across filmmaking for script development, video generation, editing, music and visual effects. A 2025 systematic review of research into AI and film production found that the technology is reshaping several stages of the filmmaking process, although significant challenges remain around consistency, creative control and maintaining continuity.
For some Ghanaian viewers, however, the technology has not yet solved the most important part of filmmaking: making audiences care.
“Sometimes, depending on the hook and storyline,” Joanna Nhyira Adu-Amoani said when asked whether she enjoys watching AI-generated videos. On whether she would watch a full-length movie made entirely with AI, she said she would be interested in watching the first one, “but it may not be continuous.”
Charles Opoku shared a similar view. “Yes if it’s sensible but not always,” he said about AI-generated videos. On a full-length AI movie, his position was equally conditional: “Somehow…I like real people acting except the film is intriguing.”
The strongest resistance came from Precious Nana Yaa Asantewaa, who said some AI videos are funny while others are “just annoying” or “weird”. She cited examples of manipulated images of public figures and objected to content she considered disrespectful.
Yet she also acknowledged that the technology has improved and said she would watch an entirely AI-generated movie if “it makes sense”.
Her concern, however, goes beyond entertainment. “Do you think AI is killing the movie industry?” she was asked. Her answer was direct: “Yes, yes.”
She argued that some producers could increasingly choose AI because they believe human talent is more expensive. Still, she drew a clear line between technological production and human performance.
“AI can never replace human emotions,” she said. “It can never replace it.”
That tension has significant economic implications for Ghana.
Film production is not simply about actors appearing on screen. It supports a wider chain of occupations, including writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, costume designers, make-up artists, sound engineers, lighting technicians, location managers, transport operators and marketers. The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts has described film as an important vehicle for job creation, tourism, investment and national identity, while the National Film Authority is mandated to develop an economically self-sustaining Ghanaian film industry.
The economic attraction of AI is therefore obvious. A producer may be able to generate certain visual elements faster, experiment with locations that would otherwise be expensive and reduce some production costs. For a Ghanaian filmmaker operating under financing constraints, those possibilities could create opportunities to produce stories that might otherwise remain on paper.
The danger is that cost reduction could also become labour reduction.
The International Labour Organization has warned that generative AI is transforming media and cultural work, affecting not only production tasks but also creative decision-making, skills requirements and employment conditions. It recommends policy frameworks, ethical governance and social dialogue to address displacement risks and protect creative control and fair compensation.
Other markets are already confronting the issue. In the United States, SAG-AFTRA secured provisions requiring informed consent and compensation for the creation and use of performers’ digital replicas. Producers must also notify the union and bargain when they want to use wholly synthetic performers.
For Ghana, the debate comes at a particularly important moment. Government launched Ghana’s National Artificial Intelligence Strategy in April 2026, signalling an intention to make AI part of the country’s economic transformation rather than remain merely a consumer of the technology.
The policy challenge is therefore not whether Ghana should reject AI. It is how the country can use it without allowing technological efficiency to undermine the people whose creativity gives the film industry its economic and cultural value.
That means clear rules on consent, digital likenesses and voices, copyright, disclosure of AI-generated content and payment for creative work. It also means training Ghanaian filmmakers to use AI as a production tool rather than treating it simply as a replacement for human talent.
The European Union offers one possible direction. Since August 2, 2026, its AI Act transparency rules have required certain AI-generated or manipulated content, including deepfakes, to be clearly disclosed, while providers must use machine-readable marking for synthetic content in applicable cases.
Ghana does not have to copy that model wholesale. However, as AI becomes cheaper and more accessible, the country will have to decide what it wants its creative economy to look like.
The question may ultimately not be whether Ghanaians will watch an AI-made movie. The more important question is whether Ghana can build an AI-powered film industry that still creates jobs, protects creators and gives audiences stories that feel unmistakably human.
