What is Film Robots?

Film Robots is a playful newsletter about AI, creativity, and making things.

It started as a newsletter about film and AI — and that’s still very much part of it. But really, it’s about the bigger, weirder question underneath: how do creative people use these tools thoughtfully and ethically? Is that even a thing?

I’m a filmmaker, writer, and recovering entrepreneur — with a background that includes The New Yorker, The New York Times, a venture-backed startup, and probably too many conversations about AI and creativity at places like Sundance and Rutgers and a whole lot of voice memos to friends. I write about what I’m making, watching, testing, questioning, and learning: AI-assisted films, creative workflows, strange new tools, ethical gray areas, beautiful experiments. And I talk to creative people who are wrestling with the same questions.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: newsletters about AI are either doomer, or they’re “save 17 hours a week life with these 10 Claude tips.” This is neither. I’m cautiously optimistic, with a healthy dose of skepticism — looking for the bright spots and inspiration, and laughing along the way.

My goal is to help you:

• Think more clearly about the messy questions AI raises for artists, filmmakers, writers, and creative people generally

• Use AI more thoughtfully in your own work — without becoming a hype person, a doomer, or a LinkedIn growth hacker

• Find beautiful, strange, and inspiring work being made with a little help from AI — especially in film, video, journalism, and literature

Hopefully, you’ll leave each issue feeling a little more informed, a little less freaked out, and a little more human, and maybe a little entertained.

I’ll also share a funny AI fail in most issues — because this is still the internet and we deserve treats.

Gimme the deets.

I’ll email you once every week or two, max. The newsletter is free.

There are a lot of AI & creativity newsletters…why this one?

Film Robots has been quoted in Curious Refuge’s AI & Documentary course, No Film School, and Video Consortium’s AI Unbiased, and I’ve taught on AI and storytelling at Sundance and Rutgers. The readership is small but genuinely impressive: subscribers hail from A24, Netflix, Sundance, Meta, The New Yorker, and NBC, just to name a few….and includes BAFTA and Emmy winners who apparently have good taste in newsletters.

Who are you?

Film Robots is made by Kristina Budelis, aka Kris (either is fine — seriously). That’s me, hi.

I’m a film director and producer based in Los Angeles, with films at Tribeca, The New Yorker, PBS, NBC, and Vogue. I started my career at The New Yorker, where I helped build the video and film department and also wrote a little. I’ve since worked at The New York Times as a product lead, consulted for startups, and cofounded KitSplit — a venture-backed gear-sharing marketplace that Forbes and Fast Company dubbed “the Airbnb of cameras,” with 50,000 filmmakers sharing $250M worth of equipment. Somewhere in all of that I became a person who thinks a whole lot about what AI means for creative work and the world. This newsletter is where I do that out loud.