American director Gore Verbinski, who is at the Taormina Film Festival in competition with “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die,” spoke about the challenges of labelling the use of AI in films as the technology continues to grow exponentially.
Verbinski’s latest, a genre-bending sci-fi that sees Sam Rockwell as a time-travelling madman recruiting help to save humanity from the threat of artificial intelligence, led the director to take a deep dive into new tools. Asked about the consequences AI will have on filmmaking, the veteran issued an alert: “You’re supposed to check this box to say no AI is used in your movie, and it’s going to become very complicated soon.”
“You’d have to go back 20 years,” he noted. “Technically speaking, artificial intelligence was being used for grading films, sharpening tools… These tools have existed for 20 years. You almost need a rating system. If you use AI to write a script, you get an F. What people are most afraid of is that there is no transparency. People are afraid of what is real and what isn’t.”
Alas, Verbinski is no purist, and doesn’t see the issue of labelling AI usage as purely black and white. If an independent filmmaker “couldn’t afford” to create a certain passage in their film that was “a central aspect” of its emotional metaphor, that would be “ok,” according to the director. “I think you have to be absolutely transparent [about] what it was used for. I would never try to use it to be in front of the story.”
