Maggie Gyllenhaal Says She Tried Using AI to Turn Dakota Johnson Into Marilyn Monroe for Short ‘Flesh Impact’ — Then Scrapped It: ‘Fundamentally Did Not Work’

Venice jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal revealed that she experimented with artificial intelligence to transform Dakota Johnson into Marilyn Monroe for her short film “Flesh Impact” which plays on the Lido. But she ended up scrapping it because she felt that it stripped Johnson’s performance of the very humanity that made it compelling.

Speaking at the symposium alongside composer Alexandre Desplat, filmmakers Lee Daniels and Shannon Murphy, producer Lorenzo Mieli and artist Marc Quinn, Gyllenhaal said the short portrays a 100-year-old Marilyn Monroe with flashbacks to Marilyn Monroe when she’s in her 30s which Johnson plays.

“And the people who commissioned this project from me asked me to use AI. And I thought — I mean, they weren’t using OpenAI, they were using licensable AI, training it off of Marilyn Monroe films that we had licensed. And I went for it. I was like, all right, I’m curious, I don’t know, let’s see,” she says.

“The idea was that we trained it on her, we then put her face on Dakota’s face. We worked hard at it, and in the end, I threw it away because what was coming through Dakota playing Marilyn Monroe was so much more moving, human, alive,” she revealed during the symposium which was presented by Finch & Partners and CAA.