CANNES – On the Members Club beach at the Cannes Film Festival, a passionate filmmaker is wearing a pin that reads “Fuck AI.”
But the filmmaker is Todd Mann, the co-founder of Flawless, and he’s here at the festival touting a new set of AI tools to help filmmakers and actors guarantee that their likeness isn’t used by technology without their consent.
“We need to come together on the right stuff and to fight the wrong stuff,” he said. “We can’t put our heads in the sand, we’ll get wiped out.”
Mann’s pin was a conversation starter for a festival that didn’t really need one when it came to artificial intelligence. Talk of the technology is everywhere, as are symposiums, panels and demonstrations around how to deploy it successfully, lashed to a debate over the limits and best uses on deck.
What’s clear is that the AI has turned a corner among some film professionals, from being the object of panic and hostility and existential threat to real curiosity over how the technology can be leveraged to make filmmaking more economically viable.
The conversation around “assistive AI” – tools that help with things like foreign language dubbing, matching images to dubbing or line changes and back office production – is where the focus is. These are efficiency tools that don’t particularly threaten copyright or creative output.
That stands in contrast to “generative AI” which is driven by the Large Language Models that scrape information from the broader universe and turn out the slop we all see (RIP Sora). Or “agentic AI,” which is the ability to solve problems by having AI write code itself. Those still feel like they will suck value from the legitimate work by creatives, or eliminate jobs now required by individual expertise.
At a party on a yacht on Friday, about 100 people gathered to listen to strategies from some of the folks who are leading the way in a gathering organized by an AI company, NewHollywood.com.
Jon Erwin, a former 3D animator who has adopted AI tools with a passion, was there. He made “House of David” for Amazon about the Biblical era King of Israel using AI, and has just finished a swords and sandals series for the streamer called “The Old Stories: Moses” starring Ben Kingsley that took half the time and budget using the technology.
“It’s a completely new way to work,” he said, heading off the gangplank of the boat. “I feel like it’s the future of the industry. It’s the only way to bring jobs back to LA.”
He said the first episode took three months instead of six, with the shoot taking only a week.
Erwin was surprised to see that other producers are not already using the technology that he figured out how to use a few years ago and is frequently giving tutorials on the software he has developed.
Elsewhere, the talk about AI is noticeably more receptive than it was just a year ago. Demi Moore made some headlines with a rather innocent remark: “AI is here. So to fight it is, in a sense, to fight something that is a battle that we will lose,” the actress and jury member said at the start of the festival.
And Peter Jackson was also in Cannes giving a masterclass on filmmaking. “To me, it’s a special effect,” he said when he was solicited on the subject. “It’s no different from other special effects.” The New Zealand director is a notable technophile and has used cutting-edge innovations in many of his films. “I don’t dislike it at all,” he stated.
At a symposium organized by the festival on Saturday, Darren Aronofsky offered a similar point, dismissing the threat of being replaced by AI. “The reality is, storytelling is my art,” he said. “I don’t think it’s very different than when I’m a dancer… You’ll always be able to tell stories, and it may even be easier to tell stories.”
The “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler” filmmaker is already enmeshed in generative AI filmmaking tools through his creative studio Primordial Soup, which has been making and releasing completely AI-made short films imagining life during the American Revolution called “On This Day… 1776” — albeit to divisive reaction from the creative community.
TheWrap has already written about the new $70 million “Bitcoin” movie by Doug Liman that has a steady stream of curious buyers filing in and out of the Majestic Hotel on the Croisette. The technology developed by ACME AI, led by Ryan Kavanaugh with a group of investors, is something other producers want to leverage.
There are, of course, still other filmmakers pushing back on the use of AI in the creative process. Speaking at a 4K restoration screening of his acclaimed film “Pan’s Labyrinth,” filmmaker Guillermo del Toro decried, “We are, unfortunately, in times that make this movie more pertinent than ever because they tell us everything is useless to resist, that art can be done with a fucking app, and we are facing things so formidable.”
Seth Rogen, similarly, said he’s befuddled by those touting AI use in creative pursuits.
“I don’t understand what it’s supposed to do,” Rogen said after he was asked about the use of AI in filmmaking. “Every time I see a video on Instagram that’s like, ‘Hollywood is cooked,’ what follows is the most stupid dog shit I’ve ever seen in my life. And if your instinct is to use AI and not go through that process, you shouldn’t be a writer. Because you’re not writing.”
But there are lots of other films that are using AI in new ways, and sharing best practices and education.
Alan Pao’s assistive AI company NewHollywood.com is already working with studios like Disney on back-end tools for practical uses like storyboards, accounting and scheduling for films. Separately, he has developed a screenwriting AI tool that he is testing himself on a new screenplay. He says it mostly provides feedback on his written work.
Todd Terrazas has seen interest in AI explode in the last two years. He co-founded “AI on the Lot,” an annual conference that brings together creatives to network and learn about the new technology. It has gone from 600 attendees to 1200 to the expected 2,000 attendees in June on the Amazon lot in Culver City. “It’s all about education and promotion,” he said of the conference. “We’re all show, not tell.”
Where AI is not visible yet is on any of the movies that are screening in competition or other parts of the festival. But Mann assures me that it’s coming. A lot of people are reluctant to admit they are using AI tools, he said.
“People don’t know how to talk about it,” he said. “Assistive AI is safe and everyone is using it. But it’s like The Force. It has a good side and a dark side. The dark side is a devastating story that will destroy the industry. But things have fundamentally changed where it is accepted technologically. That’s not a question anymore.”
