Alex Gibney’s documentary about Elon Musk premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday. As its subject declined to sit for an interview, the film built one.
In a fine irony, a CGI avatar of Musk, driven by AI voice syncing, delivers statements he made in real interviews elsewhere. A man who has spent a decade suggesting we are probably living in a simulation has now been rendered as one, in his own words, for four hours.
Gibney called the choice intentionally ironic when he presented the film, the Associated Press reported, citing both simulation theory and Musk’s position on the technology.
The device conveys the “reality of what he’s done and unreality of his narrative”, he said. The production took legal advice before proceeding, which is a step the synthetic likeness business does not always bother with.
It runs 225 minutes with a ten-minute intermission, screened out of competition in the Venice Open strand, and reaches cinemas in October.
