There have been many versions of Marilyn Monroe recreated using artificial intelligence over the years, and Maggie Gyllenhaal just revealed that she was asked to make another for her short film Flesh Impact. But it flopped compared to the real thing, played by Dakota Johnson.
“The people who commissioned this project from me asked me to use AI. 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 said Friday during The Future of… Creativity summit hosted by Finch & Partners and CAA at Scuola Grande della Misericordia during the Venice Film Festival. “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.”
To punctuate the point, she added, “It fundamentally did not work. All the reasons we decided to make this project to begin with were killed off in the AI version.”
The 17-minute short film Flesh Impact stars Johnson and Ellen Burstyn as versions of the iconic Hollywood star. It was done “with the blessings” of Monroe estate holders Authentic Brands Group and described in press materials as “a love letter to one of cinema’s most enduring icons.” Johnson plays Monroe at the height of her fame while Burstyn stars as an imagined version of Monroe later in life. (Monroe was 36 when she died on Aug. 4, 1962.) Peter Sarsgaard and The Pitt star Sepideh Moafi round out the cast.
