Seven-time Academy Award-winning studio Wētā FX (New Zealand) has entered a landmark agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop purpose-built AI tools for visual effects. The partnership, announced on December 1, 2025, focuses on creating natural interfaces that allow artists to orchestrate intelligent systems without relying on text prompts or chatbots. The initiative aims to automate repetitive mechanical tasks, such as performance capture and environment construction, while preserving full creative control.

CEO Daniel Seah and CTO Kimball Thurston emphasized that the collaboration will leverage Wētā’s thirty-year production legacy and AWS’s massive cloud infrastructure. The project plans to investigate “smaller, more efficient AI models” that can accelerate creative cycles from days to hours. By training models on specialized VFX data rather than public datasets, the partners intend to build tools that truly understand the professional language of cinematic digital effects.

This multi-year development roadmap is expected to make sophisticated AI-assisted capabilities accessible to productions of all sizes globally. Important milestones include the exploration of machine learning for complex creature motion and physics generalization. This strategic alliance positions Wētā FX as a key seller of innovative production workflows, while AWS solidifies its role as the primary infrastructure provider for the next generation of AI-driven entertainment. (New Zealand)