The AI Conundrum in Hollywood Filmmaking: A Deep Dive into the AI Film Festival
Last year, Paul Schrader, the esteemed filmmaker renowned for directing works such as Blue Collar, American Gigolo, and First Reformed, and for penning the screenplay of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, posited a thought - provoking query regarding artificial intelligence in Hollywood filmmaking. Just days after the release of Denis Villeneuve's sci - fi epic Dune: Part Two, Schrader posed to his Facebook followers: "Will Dune 3 be made by AI? And, if so, how would we discern it?"
Schrader is not only respected as a director but also as one of cinema's most incisive critics, known for his acerbic wit and provocative posts. His Dune - related tweet, however, seemed to transcend mere provocation. It echoed a growing sentiment among numerous film enthusiasts, myself included: that Hollywood had descended to producing polished, soulless visuals lacking in individuality, as if they were churned out not by a passionate, sentient artist but by a computer.
Most generative AIs "train" on vast repositories of human - made images. Paradoxically, with Dune, the reverse appeared to be the case. It seemed as though Villeneuve was drawing inspiration from AI - generated imagery, screensavers, and high - gloss desktop wallpapers. (Although, in reality, the film utilized "machine learning" models to a relatively limited extent.) This observation led me to ponder: Is there a distinct AI aesthetic? Do AI - powered video generators share a common set of artistic concepts or values in their output? Or, more fundamentally, can AI video generators even possess ideas or values?
My initial intuitions were as follows: a) no; b) no; and c) no. Surely, "ideas" and "values" are the exclusive domain of human artists and, more broadly, human beings. A toaster doesn't decide on its own to warm your bread or bagel and then act on that decision; nor does it care about the process. It simply executes a set of routine, mechanized functions related to warming (and eventually ejecting) bread, bagels, and other toaster - friendly items. Why should generative AI be any different?
To test these assumptions (and my rather dismissive conclusions), I made my way to a theater in New York to attend a program featuring 10 short films from the 2025 AI Film Festival.
The AI Film Festival: Origins and Objectives
The AI Film Festival is supported by Runway, a New York - based AI firm that offers "tools for human imagination." Among these tools are image and video generators enabling users to create characters, sets, lighting setups, and entire immersive scenes. With its Gen - 4 software, users can, in theory, create a complete movie or something approximating one.
Runway's co - founder, Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, along with his partners, who met as graduate students in NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), said, "We were all frustrated filmmakers. We wanted to build the tools that we wanted to use."
The film festival was also born out of a desire to legitimize these AI tools. This summer, a gala screening was held at New York's prestigious Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center (home to the New York Film Festival and year - round programming). Filmmakers and technologists gathered to view the best of a technology often dismissed as producing mere "junk." Ortiz notes that the festival format serves to "bring people together." Now, the same gala program is touring select Imax cinemas across the country for a limited time.
Film Quality and Aesthetic at the AI Film Festival
As with any collection of 10 shorts by 10 different filmmakers, the quality varied. The program started promisingly with Maddie Hong's Emergence, an immersive nature documentary "shot" (and narrated) from the perspective of a butterfly larva emerging from its chrysalis. Herinarivo Rakotomanana's rotoscope - animated More Tears Than Harm, with its bold pastel color palette, superficially resembled the work of American primitivist painter Horace Pippin (one of my personal favorites). Simon Reith's 6000 Lies was a rapid collage of developing human fetuses, followed by a photo of a fetus burial site. In abridged form, it could potentially serve as an effective advertisement for a pro - life group.
If there was a shared aesthetic among the films, it was a sense of commercialized polish: rapid - fire edits, smooth, photorealistic images. Some, like Riccardo Fusetti's Editorial and Vallée Duhamel's Fragments of Nowhere, resembled perfume ads for a fragrance an android might wear. The least impressive was an anime short called RŌHKI - A Million Trillion Pathways, credited to a filmmaker named Hachi and IO. Besides being completely derivative, it highlighted the obvious limitations of the technology, such as characters' earlobes and shirt collars changing shape between scenes.
One filmmaker in the audience, Robert Pietri, was largely impressed by what he saw. "A couple of them were really pushing the boundaries, going in the direction I think this technology should take, which is creating a cinema that's otherwise unattainable. I was excited," he said. He attributes the weaker films more to the "limitations of the creators" rather than the emerging AI toolkit. It seems that an AI cannot overcome bad ideas inputted by humans via prompts, at least not yet.
Existential and Practical Questions Raised by AI - Generated Films
As a skeptic of generative AI, watching the program raised a plethora of questions. Some were rather mundane, like: Does the standard movie - theater etiquette regarding cell - phone use apply during an AI film festival? One could envision a computer - made film perhaps even "approving" of another little computer lighting up in the dark theater.
Other questions were more existential or ontological, related to the very nature of "AI art." Even when the films were entertaining or visually appealing, I couldn't shake the feeling of being somewhat deceived. Aren't these qualities mere imitations of real films painstakingly created by real people? And thus, aren't even the "good" AI - generated films still fundamentally flawed?
There are also more practical considerations. Generative AI has been criticized for its massive consumption of natural resources. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted that the proliferation of data centers is unsustainable without significant advancements in nuclear fusion. AI's incursion into creative fields has also raised concerns about mass layoffs in the film and video - game industries. Runway's Ortiz views AI as similar to previous technological disruptions in creative fields. "Technology has disrupted the job market," he says, "but it also opens up new opportunities."
Technologists and "creatives" promoting these tools often present the arrival of this "new stuff" as inevitable. Phoenix - based filmmaker Jacob Adler, whose Total Pixel Space won top honors at the AI Film Festival, seems to share a similar philosophy. "I am fascinated by the long - term technological evolution that requires the passage of time, starting with biological technologies like self - replicating molecules, cell membranes, photosynthesis, nervous systems, eyes, brains, etc.," Adler wrote in an email to WIRED. "AI is not a deviation from nature but a continuation of the fundamental evolutionary trend of biology learning to build more complex information - processing systems, now outside its own biological framework."
The Divisive Battle Lines Surrounding AI in Cinema
However, the traditional approach to art has its defenders. The battle lines regarding AI in cinema seem increasingly irreconcilable. It's no surprise that skeptics, critics, and proponents of traditional filmmaking have been denouncing the AI Film Festival from the start.
When Imax announced its partnership with Runway AI, cinephiles' reactions were vehement. One X user commented, "Not watching anything made by clankers," referencing the derogatory term for robots in the Star Wars films. Actor Jared Gillman reposted Imax's announcement on X with an image of Ethan Hawke in a suicide vest from First Reformed, captioning it, "One ticket for the ai imax film festival please" (perhaps doubly appropriate, given Schrader's views on the technology). The alliance between Imax and AI seemed particularly offensive. After all, Imax is a corporation ostensibly dedicated to showcasing the grandest theatrical cinematic experience, while AI is perceived as something entirely different. As one scathing Redditor put it, "Imax and Runway AI Sign a Film Festival Deal to Show Dogshit."
Defenders of AI (many of whom have a financial stake in its success) often claim that many great artistic leaps in human history faced similar resistance. They have a point, to an extent. Digital filmmaking challenged analog, celluloid - based filmmaking. The introduction of sound and color in cinema was initially regarded as a mere gimmick. Early critics and academics even worried that photographic media like cinema could never be art because they merely represented reality rather than interpreting it.
Over time, and with numerous counter - arguments, these views have largely been disproven. Adler's award - winning short (which earned him a $15,000 cash prize and 1 million Runway AI "credits") is a thesis on this very concept. Total Pixel Space explores the idea of a hypothetical universe of colored pixels, delving into what its narrator calls "a process of discovery in which all of reality is already mapped."
Yet, the question remains: Is all of reality "already mapped"? Is this technology merely being "discovered," like a river or a trendy restaurant? Or is it being invented and managed by people making real decisions with real consequences? Perhaps AI is just the latest disruptive innovation that has riled up the naysayers and traditionalists. Or perhaps machine - generated art represents not just another step in cinematic - technological evolution but a fundamental departure from the basic, assumed notion of what it means to create art: that it requires skill, patience, talent, and at the very least, a human as the driving force. AI is a difference not in degree but in kind - not the next step in a process but an entirely different entity, like apples and computer - generated oranges.
The Youth's Perspective on AI in Filmmaking
For Troy Petermann, a 15 - year - old attending the New York screening of the Imax AI Film Festival with his family, AI is not a tool but a threat. "AI is definitely an innovation," says the aspiring filmmaker. "But innovation can be humanity's downfall. We often don't know when to stop when things go too far."
Petermann's insights are refreshing, especially considering that generative AI technologies are often targeted at his demographic: aspiring filmmakers with big ideas but limited resources, tools, or institutional support. He acknowledges that AI technology may have significant "analytical" capabilities, such as processing and synthesizing information. "When it comes to creative aspects," he says, "we should draw the line."
The lines between traditional and AI - generated filmmaking are becoming increasingly blurred. The AI Film Festival faced such intense cinephile scorn in part because it was an easy target, seen as a conscious enemy of the seventh art. Runway's Ortiz speculates that for the festival's next iteration, the company may change the branding entirely. "I don't think it will remain the 'AI Film Festival,'" he says. "We believe AI will just be part of any creative process. Similar to other companies, everyone will be an AI - using company, and AI will become just another tool in filmmaking."
