George Clooney and Maggie Gyllenhaal were among a raft of creatives and execs flagging the risks posed by artificial intelligence at a Venice Film Festival symposium dedicated to the technology.
Organised by Finch & Partners and CAA, and opened by Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera, further panellists included director and screenwriter Giuseppe Tornatore, composer Alexandre Desplat, Anonymous Content CEO Darren Walker and Italian producer Lorenzo Mieli, as well as Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonca, head of culture and education at the Vatican, artist Marc Quinn, Signal president Meredith Whittaker and Babyteeth director Shannon Murphy.
The speakers raised the alarm about the impact on the film industry, saying that jobs in areas such as art departments through to visual effects would be lost at scale.
Clooney predicted AI would revolutionise the industry. “You’ll be able to make a film on your phone that costs the studio a couple of 100 million dollars. That is happening pretty quickly. A lot of people are going to get replaced. Not just actors, but crew members, visual effects supervisors.
Gyllenhaal said she had experimented with AI to turn Dakota Johnson into Marilyn Monroe for her short film Flesh Impact, which is playing at Venice.
“It fundamentally did not work,” she said. “In the end I threw it away because what was coming through Dakota playing Marilyn Monroe was so much more moving, human and alive. All the reasons we decided to make the project were killed off in the AI version.”
Gyllenhaal said she is “someone who works in collaboration with many people, who finds the life inside the work by interacting with my actors, my cinematographer, my production designer, my gaffer”.
She cited working with Jessie Buckley on her recent film The Bride!. “The thing that makes Jessie Buckley so brilliant is her bouncing off the world, her interaction with me, with the actors around her. It is impossible to [replicate] that.”
She noted the huge changes likely to be wrought by AI, warning the jobs of filmmakers, talent and crew are threatened by the technology. “If you can make a commercial, good enough movie for $40,000 or $4m, who is going to give you $10m to do it the old way? Nobody.”
“If efficiency is the goal, I can see how that can be applied to everything, including movies. You can efficiently make an ok movie, probably at some point.”
Many panellists flagged the opportunities presented by AI, such as advances in medical research. Others said it would provide chances for young filmmakers without access to traditional tools and finance.
But they were more cautious about how it might be applied to the creative sector. “I’m not sure whether it can take the place of creativity, because creativity is about communication between human beings,” said Quinn.
Others questioned AI’s true value within the film industry, saying audiences would be able to distinguish between movies created by a human and content created by the technology. Walker noted that young people are pushing back against technology and that Gen Z in particular was coming back to theatres and live events.
Multiple panellists noted the technology is dominated by a handful of companies such as Google, OpenAI and X. Others flagged the societal harms caused by AI, from its environmental impact through issues around copyright, information control and politics.
Clooney noted the richest men in the world “own the instruments from which we inform ourselves: Facebook, Twitter/X and the Washington Post…when we talk about AI, I am infinitely more concerned about what it can do to us as the people finding information”.
He cited an example of AI-produced content showing him sitting with President Obama “talking about insane things” that never happened in reality. “Ok, that is a joke for people. But what happens when you see a video of Putin saying he’s launched the first nuclear strike in the United States? And how do you discern it?”
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