A perspective from Nollywood Examining how GenAI is integrated in the Nigerian film industry

This article examines the uptake of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in the Nigerian film industry (Nollywood). It positions Nollywood as a key empirical and conceptual reference point for understanding how AI reshapes cultural production. Inspired by post-colonial and decolonial theory, it challenges the predominant focus in AI and cultural industries research on the Anglo-American world and Europe. Situating GenAI adoption within Nollywood’s institutional history and labour relations, the article rethinks key issues pertaining to AI and the democratisation of cultural production, the precarity of cultural labour, and the question of bias. Addressing these issues, we draw on 21 semi-structured interviews with Nigerian filmmakers, complemented by trade press and news analysis. The study identifies three interrelated dynamics. First, the integration of GenAI intensifies existing market bifurcations. Rather than democratising creativity, differences in access to subscription-based GenAI tools reinforce stratification between high-budget productions, targeting cinema and global streaming services, and low-budget productions, oriented towards domestic streaming services and YouTube. Second, the paper details how GenAI generates cultural friction in the practices of cultural production. Nigerian filmmakers encounter cultural misplacement, stereotyping, and what we call unrepresentation, due to models trained predominantly on Global North data. Yet, these frictions also prompt tactical workarounds, including hybrid workflows, model customization, and the development of localised AI infrastructures. Third, the study contributes to debates on cultural labour by showing that GenAI does not primarily replace creative practices. Instead, it substitutes specific forms of informal labour, particularly in pre-production. This reshapes labour precarity by eroding informal relational economies that have historically sustained Nollywood’s workforce.