Artificial Intelligence has been talked about a lot in recent months. And, unfortunately, such discourse hasn’t been over renewed appreciation for the 2001 feature A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Instead, there’s been renewed talk over using A.I. in major film and TV productions, often instead of using writers or other below-the-line crew members. Attention has only grown over this matter thanks to the recent Writer’s Guild of America strike. Among the many understandable complaints from these writers is the unwillingness on the part of studios to refrain from using Artificial Intelligence when it comes to writing screenplays. A seemingly simple and vital request has been shot down by the major studios, with this refusal being one of the major impetuses behind the strike in the first place. Corporations are making it clear that writers are expendable while technology like A.I. should be given precedence.
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Corporations may breathlessly talk about A.I. as “the way of the future” to shareholders and countless Twitter users have also taken to A.I. as a symbol of living in a futuristic utopia. In reality, though, the very concept of A.I.-generated movies and TV shows is antithetical to the very concept of art. Going this route with creating pop culture properties would surely save some coins for already exorbitantly wealthy executives. However, A.I. can never function as a proper replacement for real artists.

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A.I. Is (Unfortunately) Already Here

Image via Warner Bros.

If one is curious about what a future pop culture landscape dominated by pieces of art molded by machines would look like, just take a peek at some recent videos that have gone viral online. These shorts have been brought to life with A.I. technology and are meant to demonstrate the artistic capabilities of this technology. In reality, the results have often been creepy and desperately missing a human touch. What are conceptually meant to be tech demo’s that unwittingly get people latched onto A.I. art without realizing it will inevitably inspire a sense of “something’s off” even to those unaware that what they’re looking at what made by A.I.

The best example of this phenomenon is a recent “Star Wars but directed by Wes Anderson” video that was generated by A.I. This short functions as a microcosm of the internet’s fascination with cramming two disparate pop culture properties together and then selling the resulting mash-up. Such an obsession reaches a new low with this A.I.-generated video, which is just astonishingly poor. The images on-screen don’t register at all as being evocative of the cinematography of Wes Anderson. There’s such unspeakably irony in watching the innately cold and detached nature of A.I. technology fail to emulate the warmth of a Wes Anderson movie. His features often look so lovingly handmade, with textures you want to reach out and touch. This A.I. video, by contrast, is just repellant and sterile.

Compare this video to the hysterical Saturday Night Live parody of Wes Anderson movies, The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders. For starters, mashing up a home invasion horror film with an Anderson film is already a much more inventive way of juxtaposing the director’s style with an unexpected strain of genre cinema. For another, the whole video reeks of effort and dedication to the smallest details, including Edward Norton’s highly amusing Owen Wilson impression. This is something made by hand by people who had a love for both home invasion horror films and the works of a master auteur. This is what happens when you let flesh-and-blood people make art. That wretched Star Wars/Wes Anderson video, on the other hand, is a harbinger of a future where all art is just calculated by an algorithm devoid of any soul.

Imperfections Make Art Amazing

Image via Netflix

In his painting tutorials, Bob Ross would often refer to little blemishes or other shortcomings in a painting as simply “happy little accidents.” It was a great way to underscore to people that something deemed “a flaw” in a work of art is not innately a bad thing. It can often emphasize the personality of the artist who brought this piece of creativity into the world or unintentionally enhanced the themes of a story. Those little bumps and hiccups that can seem so world-shattering when one is making a piece of art can actually be the qualities that end up solidifying its distinctive voice.

A.I. Art, unfortunately, is built from the ground up to strangle out such incidental imperfections. Not every piece of art created by A.I. is perfect (goodness knows), but the art it creates is based on pre-ordained instructions and executed in a rigid mechanical sense. Any shortcomings are based on the instructions given to the A.I. or the program itself rather than spontaneity during the act of artistic exploration. For well over a century, films have been marked by unexpected imperfections. The greatest directors, from Steven Spielberg to Agnes Varda and everyone in between, have seen their art positively influenced by unexpected defects. The greatest pieces of television have similarly been defined by such issues. Leaning on A.I. to create film and television would remove the opportunities for such genuine bits of imperfection, which reflect the humanity behind the art you’re experiencing.

Nobody Really Wants A.I. Content

Image via Blumhouse

Studio executives really like the concept of A.I.-generated movies and TV for an assortment of reasons. But there’s not really a demand for this from the public, let alone the artists who work tirelessly to bring major pieces of pop culture to life. There aren’t average folks in the pop culture landscape on their hands and knees begging for A.I. systems to craft pieces of art. Movies and TV shows are important, or at least they can be. They can offer images ranging from dazzling sights removed from any semblance of reality to frames that vividly capture the finer nuances of everyday life, sometimes simultaneously. Films and television can deliver so many different types of narratives, all of them capable of plumbing the depths of our souls. The medium has even delivered works like M3gan that suggest the horrors of letting technology supplant human emotions and connections.

Those achievements come from the fact that these are projects worked on by a massive collection of human beings, each putting their blood sweat and tears into something bigger than just one person. To leave such stories and creative processes to A.I. systems would deprive artists of chances to express themselves and audiences of opportunities to experience truly mesmerizing pieces of art. There’s a reason the Writer’s Guild of America has put its foot down so staunchly against artificial intelligence being used for artistic purposes. No matter what weirdos on social media say, these modern tools can never replace human creativity.