Digital Hollywood: The AI & Entertainment Summit

Tuesday, July 21st, 2026

2– 2:50 PM Eastern Time Zone

Session I: A Virtual Event

The Deepfake Dilemma: Synthetic Memes & Characters – Creativity vs. Legal Jeopardy

Deepfakes began as a curiosity and became a cultural force. Today synthetic media — AI-generated likenesses, cloned voices, fabricated characters and viral meme culture — sits at the intersection of extraordinary creative possibility and genuine moral jeopardy. The question is no longer whether the technology works. It works remarkably well. Where does satire end and defamation begin? When does a synthetic character become misrepresentation for profit? These are real and unresolved questions. But synthetic media is also extending artists' careers, enabling directors to reshoot scenes during editing without recalling talent, giving brands new creative tools and opening storytelling possibilities that simply didn't exist before. In this roundtable we confront both sides of the Deepfake Dilemma honestly — the extraordinary creative potential and the genuine moral responsibility that comes with it.

Speakers:

Steve Masur, Partner, Raines Feldman Littrell LLP, Moderator

Ted Schilowitz, Visionary & Futurist, formerly Paramount Global & 20th Century Fox 

Tommy Petrov, Co-founder & CEO, CopySight AI

Marina Hassapopoulou, Associate Professor of Cinema Studies, Martin Scorsese Dept. of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU

Diana Colella is executive vice president of Autodesk’s Entertainment & Media vertical solutions group. In this role, she manages product, strategy and execution for the company’s portfolio servicing the film, TV and games industries. Colella has been with Autodesk for more than 20 years occupying a range of leadership roles, including head of product management and worldwide support. She has extensive experience in strategically transforming business models, creating new product offerings and optimizing processes on a global scale. Most recently, she served as vice president in Autodesk’s Business Strategy and Marketing group, leading the M&E and AutoCAD businesses, which represent more than $1B in annual recurring revenue. In this role, she drove the company’s strategy for digital conversion of non-compliant users and launched One AutoCAD. She is the executive sponsor of the Autodesk Women’s Network.