Artificial intelligence is an opportunity for free and experimental cinema

Artificial intelligence is a threat to the professional academic sector that produces blockbusters and other commercially driven films, and an opportunity for free and experimental cinema.

When the machine can do better than humans

Films aimed at reaching the widest possible audience—through narrative techniques, directing, and academic working methods—will soon be produced far more efficiently. This applies to the narrative structure of stories, audience engagement in gripping plots tied to humanity’s great myths, or even the replacement of technical means and academic working methods—because the results of these methods can be imitated by technology.

Already, about fifteen years ago, the widespread use of drones in professional filmmaking marked the beginning of the democratization of a highly sophisticated filming tool, previously reserved for ultra-high-budget productions.

To attract audiences to commercial theaters or digital streaming platforms, it will soon be enough to generate the prompts needed to produce appealing works. And before long, humans won’t even be necessary for this prompt generation, as fine-grained audience analysis—like Netflix’s, for example—will allow machines to produce the prompts themselves, enabling AIs to create films that please viewers and generate revenue.

In 2012, Netflix’s first original series, House of Cards, had its creative brief inspired by audience analysis algorithms. It was directed by talented humans, and it’s an excellent series. Soon, following the same logic of high-quality content production, the creative process itself will be entrusted to machines. As a result, extraordinary commercial works could be produced, featuring—if desired—deceased actors, living actors, or even imaginary beings with hyper-realistic appearances, filmed in stunning detail.

A professional sector upended

This is why the rise of generative artificial intelligence represents a true catastrophe for the academic film industry. All technical expertise, including screenwriting and even imaginative tasks, will—without a doubt—be replaced in the medium term by these agents of our new era, so adept at producing what appeals based on psychosociological analysis of humans.

One might mistakenly assume that the stories and direction produced by these machines will be pale imitations of human creations. This is false, as proven in 2016 by AlphaGo, the AI that defeated humans at Go—a game with near-infinite possibilities, unlike chess, where humans were beaten by the machine’s creativity and imagination. In fact, some opening moves invented by AlphaGo, which no human had ever conceived, are now used by professional players. Machines can be creative, even within strict frameworks—which they can even challenge.

When the combustion engine emerged in the early 20^th century, an entire professional sector—travel—was disrupted, with many jobs disappearing: post stations, farriers, etc. People had to reinvent themselves, adapt, learn new trades, and build new industries.

A similar phenomenon will occur, in my opinion, in the academic audiovisual production sector, because its rules are clear, innovation is rare, and it will therefore be very easy for machines to imitate, improve, or even reinvent these types of narratives and cultural products.

And humanity will reclaim its rightful place

On the other hand, free, experimental cinema—based on formal discovery through experimentation, improvisation, and creative chance—has a bright future ahead. I’d wager that future audiences, aware that the works they consume on platforms and in commercial theaters will mostly be machine-produced, will develop a growing appetite for specifically human creations. There will be no hierarchy between the two, just complementary approaches.

Thus, a future sector of audiovisual freedom and experimentation has, in my view, a promising path ahead. It deserves cultivation, particularly through support from French cultural institutions like the CNC. We must champion radically different production methods: not relying on pre-written scripts, but on experimental frameworks capable of producing unprecedented, captivating audiovisual works—utterly distinct from what AIs can generate today or tomorrow.

Perhaps, in a third phase, machines may one day imitate this too, but that’s a long-term prospect. As humans, we have a wide window to create in our own way, dig into our singularities, our intuitions, and affirm what sets us apart from machines. Because differences exist: they lie in our ways of doing. Doing differently, to produce different works. That, to me, is a future path for the professional audiovisual sector: daring.