Mathieu Kassovitz has given his full-throated backing to AI as the future of cinema, calling the technology 'the last artistic tool we need' and dismissing concerns about AI stealing artists' intellectual property. He is making an almost entirely AI-enabled film based on a 1940s wartime comic book by Edmond-François Calvo. His advocacy came at the second World AI film festival in Cannes, which contrasts with the main Cannes film festival's announcement of an AI ban for films in its official competition this month.
Kassovitz predicted that the first AI film stars are around the corner. He described a near future where AI superstars with millions of followers will exist in users' phones for direct interaction during movie promotions. Kassovitz said that in two years, nobody will care whether film characters are created by AI or played by actors.
Fuck copyright.
On a practical level, Kassovitz is setting up an AI film studio in Paris. Traditional US and European studios costed the visual effects he wanted for his film adaptation at $50-60m, but with AI it will cost $25m. Hollywood studios are starting to integrate more AI, with investments in AI companies and tech leaders being hired to steer the new technology.
Musician Jean-Michel Jarre has echoed this pro-AI stance, attacking the conservatism of the music and film industries and urging them to embrace the technology instead of being fearful. He said that while existing creative industries are freaking out over AI, artists will use it to create the cinema of tomorrow, the hip-hop of tomorrow, the techno of tomorrow, the rock’n’roll of tomorrow. Jarre stated that AI's power to generate images and sounds would not kill talent, but should be embraced as pioneers embraced moving image and sound in the early 20th century.
Right now, everybody’s scared. But in a few years from now, you will have really, really good AI superstars. You will have AI actors with millions of followers. They will exist in your phone [and] when they have a promo for the movie, you can talk to them directly.
This advocacy unfolds as artists and musicians around the world are fighting through courts and legislatures to protect their copyrighted works from being scraped and regurgitated by AI models.