Last Month I Hired a Team of SI Bots. Here's What Changed.

Last month I hired a team. None of them are people.

They're SI bots. SI stands for super intelligence, and these bots now run a big share of the production operations at Artroom8. I've been producing film, TV and branded content for a long time, and this is one of the biggest changes I've made to how the studio works. Here's what happened, what changed and what didn't.

Why I did it

Anyone who has run a production company knows the creative work is only part of the job. The rest is operations: scheduling, follow-ups, organizing files, tracking versions, preparing documents, chasing details and making sure nothing falls through the cracks. It's important work. It's also the work that quietly fills your day until there's no time left for the story.

I kept asking myself one question. What if the busywork took care of itself, so the team could spend more of its time on what clients actually hire us for?

What an SI bot team looks like

I don't think of these as one magic assistant. I think of them as a team, with each bot owning a lane of production operations. Some handle research and preparation. Some keep schedules and tasks organized. Some draft first versions of documents, so a person starts from something instead of a blank page. Others keep track of the details across projects.

The key word is operations. The bots don't decide what our films say or how they look. They run the machinery around the filmmaking.

What changed

Less waiting

Much of production is waiting: for a schedule, a document, an answer or a file. When a bot can prepare a first draft right away, work stops sitting in a queue. Projects move forward between meetings instead of only during them.

Fewer dropped balls

Every producer has had the sinking feeling of realizing a detail got missed. Bots don't get tired at the end of a long shoot day, and they don't forget to follow up. That consistency matters more than I expected.

More time for the creative calls

This is the change I care about most. When operations run themselves, I get hours back. I spend those hours on story, on clients and on the decisions only a person can make. Our team does the same.

A different way to think about scale

A small studio used to have to choose between staying lean and taking on more. With SI bots handling operations, our Brooklyn studio and our offices in Washington, DC and Tampa Bay can take on more ambitious work without drowning in admin.

What didn't change

I want to be clear about this, because there's a lot of fear around AI in creative industries.

People still own the work. Every creative decision, every client relationship and every final sign-off stays with a person. The bots propose and prepare. People decide.

Quality standards didn't drop. If anything, they went up. With more of our attention free, we can be pickier about the work itself.

The heart is still human. That's why my tagline for all of this is human heart with the speed of automation. Automation is the engine. It isn't the driver.

What I've learned so far

• Give each bot a clear job. A bot with a vague role creates vague results. A bot with a specific lane gets useful fast.
• Keep a person in the loop on anything that matters. Anything client-facing, creative or irreversible gets human review.
• Start with the busywork you hate most. That's where you feel the difference first.
• Keep improving it. I treat the bot team like any team. When something isn't working, we change the process.

What it means for our clients

For the brands, companies and partners we work with, this shows up in a simple way. Things move faster, communication is tighter and the people on your project have more time to think about your story. It pairs naturally with the generative filmmaking we already do in house. AI helps us make the images, and SI bots help us run the production around them. I go deeper into that workflow in How an AI Film Production Company in NYC Works.

Where this goes next

I don't think every studio will look like ours tomorrow. But I do think the production company of the near future pairs a small, senior creative team with a team of bots that handles the operations. That's the studio I'm building at Artroom8, from Brooklyn, NYC.

If you're a founder or leader thinking about how AI could change your own content program, I'm happy to compare notes. It's part of the strategic storytelling advisory we do for C-suite executives and boards.