Jen Parkhill

Director

Director of ReelShort’s queer vertical hit “Poolboy,” which the app followed with an AI-made anime version carrying the same plot. Parkhill says AI is already taking work from artists and wants profit sharing and creator-owned IP written into the format.

Director Filmmaker Entertainment Microdrama

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Why this score

How the formula works →

+1.6anti1 anti-AI statement (forceful)
±0nuancedSupports AI only with conditions

Weights, statement counts, the ×1.25 multiplier for having a stake in an AI-impacted field, and the formula’s smoothing are already baked in — the points add up to the score (direction-free evidence pulls toward the middle instead): Leaning Anti-AI · 1.6/10

Biography

Jen Parkhill — who goes by JP — is a director, writer, and actor working between Austin and New York, an SXSW Audience Award winner, a DGA member, and a published poet. In the vertical micro drama business they directed “Poolboy” for ReelShort, an early queer-themed hit for the app and a nominee for its Vertical Drama of the Year.

The same show, redrawn without the cast

ReelShort — one of the largest players in the format — later released “Under the Surface,” an anime version carrying an identical plot and description to “Poolboy.” Cast members and viewers objected on social media. Speaking to Business Insider in July 2026, Parkhill made the case that the argument had moved out of the hypothetical.

The idea of AI taking jobs away from artists and big companies using AI to exploit creatives for profit — that idea is no longer an idea. It’s a real true circumstance that’s arriving on our shores now — we need to be talking about profit sharing and artists having ownership over their IP.

— Business Insider, 2026

That is a director’s framing rather than a performer’s: the demand is not only consent for a likeness but a share of what the derivative earns and ownership of the underlying work. It lands in a corner of the industry with almost no union coverage — the same nonunion vertical contracts that left actors such as Ashley BeLoat and Evan Gambardella with no leverage when their shows were remade — and in a US micro drama market worth roughly $1.4 billion that is testing how far synthetic production can go.