Tilda Swinton drew a sharp line between cinema and artificial intelligence at a Cannes Film Festival masterclass, arguing that AI poses a genuine threat only when filmmakers default to the predictable.
“I believe as long as what we’re not producing is formulaic and in some way tiring for the audience, AI doesn’t have a chance,” Swinton said during a wide-ranging on-stage conversation moderated by Didier Allouch. “But as long as we can continue to do that, then we have to watch out.”
She added: “What we need to do is what only humans can do: make messy, adventurous experiences so that an audience does not know what’s coming next and enjoys that experience.”
The argument, she insisted, was not simply about streaming versus theatrical but about the fundamental cost of boring an audience. Swinton conjured the specific frustration of a moviegoer who has paid for travel, a ticket and a meal only to recognize a film they feel they have already seen four times. “That’s what we have to watch out for,” she said.
Cinema, she argued, had survived every previous moment of supposed obsolescence – sound, color, television, video and streaming – and would survive this one, provided it remained in the hands of people willing to take risks. “She’s a human business,” she said. “Humans make cinema, right?”
