In Cannes’ darkened screening rooms, the supposed future of cinema flickered into life this week and it was strange. The first edition of the World AI film festival (WAIFF) showcased visions of men with fish scales erupting from their necks and seaweed from their mouths, a heroine with a heart beating outside her body and so many massed armies of AI-generated tanned men sweeping across battlefields that David Lean would have blushed.
Last week the Cannes film festival, entering its 76th year, banned the emerging technology from its Palme d’Or competition, insisting “AI imitates very well but it will never feel deep emotions”. But this week the Croisette was taken over by the upstart AI film movement and their big-tech backers amid increasing investment and attention from the Hollywood studios. A “nouvelle vague”, they said, is coming.
Many of the films on show were a world away from the sun-drenched glamour usually associated with Cannes icons such as Brigitte Bardot or George Clooney. One was about a man who makes billions from a company based on selling the idea “nothing matters”. There were numerous Blade Runner-ish dystopias and renditions of feverish nightmares that seemed to channel wider social anxieties about AI. And there was the odd entry that sailed close to the great controversy about AI and culture – copyright theft.
A short film that contained lead characters remarkably similar to Aardman Animation’s Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit, was shortlisted for an award, causing some raised eyebrows. It certainly looked like a copy to Mathieu Kassovitz, the multiple award-winning director of the gritty 1995 classic La Haine, who said very simply: “What the fuck?”
The festival organisers responded by saying their jury had noticed “a strong resemblance to an existing work” and “decided not to award or screen it”.
“The WAIFF is extremely committed to respecting copyright,” it said. But the case was a reminder that the AI models being used to create AI cinema have been trained on millions of hours of careful and expensive human labour and that the big tech companies that sell them are under pressure to ensure compensation and consent.
The festival was raw and patchy, as befitting an industry in its infancy, and the moment was frequently compared to 1895, when the Lumière brothers projected their first film. But AI cinema will soon be reaching a theatre near you. Last week Batman star Val Kilmer, who died a year ago, appeared in a trailer for a film in which his posthumous “performance” comes AI generated. Big name Hollywood players including Ron Howard, James Cameron and Matthew McConaughey have invested in the technology and the chatter in the festival corridors was of the AI film festival overhauling its analogue rival.
Hollywood studios are interested in using AI to allow them “more shots on goal” by making several $50m…
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