Wu-Tang’s RZA is leaning into AI to accelerate his creativity across both film and music.

Born Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, RZA admitted during a CES 2026 panel titled “From Concept to Reality: Creatives Using AI to Bring Big Ideas to Life,” that he views the technology as a strong creative assistant. It has provided a foundation for his work, enabling him to operate more efficiently.

“Creativity is time … It could take three days to get something good with today’s technology. And with AI assistant, I could turn that three days to three hours. So even quicker,” RZA told the audience.

Gemini

He also shared he uses Gemini, Google’s AI assistant that can turn words into videos and create images in seconds, according to its website. While working on a film project where he wanted the characters to board the Staten Island ferry, then travel across a frozen Hudson River with RZA’s logo, RZA used Gemini to create those conditions, which would typically be difficult for productions to achieve, he said.

The project took an estimated six weeks and, compared to traditional Hollywood timelines, reduced time to completion by 70%, he said.

“In those days, the special effects, someone had to paint on the frame … And the tedious work of that is what took so much time in those days. Now with the power of technology, AI, you can have that done for you. You still gotta have the idea. There’s an esoteric thought that I read … It said, any thought conceived can be expressed. And for a creator, that’s everything. You may have the thought and not the resources to express it. I think now with this assistant intelligence, this alternative, this amplified intelligent ability, any creative thought conceived now can be expressed. I think that’s an amazing thing for us,” RZA shared.

A Ballet Through Mud

AI helped RZA demo his 2024 classical album, “A Ballet Through Mud,” before performing it with a live orchestra. The approach added greater intentionality to the process while saving time and money, he shared at CES 2026.

“Instead of me spending 10, 12 days of trying to get it right, we got that recorded in one day. You look at the orchestra, not to talk numbers here, but the orchestra could cost you up to $60 grand a day. So we mitigated. And the idea of what I wanted them to do was already captured enough so that the human energy … the human pull of the string, accents, made the demo even better than I imagined.”