David Cronenberg thinks we should both fear and welcome AI
"The whole idea of actors and production will be gone. That’s the promise and the threat of artificial intelligence," the The Shrouds director said
AI could truly never make The Fly or Videodrome, but David Cronenberg still envisions a world in which the technology blots out Hollywood entirely. “You can imagine a screenwriter sitting there, writing the movie, and if that person can write it in enough detail, the movie will appear,” the legendary horror director said of his vision for the future at a Cannes press conference today (via Deadline). Instead of screenwriters or directors, these people will be called “prompters,” responsible only for setting up the AI with enough detail to spit out an entire film, he mused.
As well as sounding like the germ of an idea for an upcoming movie, this suggestion is, unfortunately, pretty spot on. TCLtv+ just released the first trailer for Next Stop Paris, the first-ever fully AI-generated movie. Right now, it still at least looks AI-generated in a way that could never replace the sort of visceral practical effects Cronenberg is so infamous for. (It should be noted that he also sent an offering to our incoming AI overlords by recognizing that computer-generated technology has made things like removing stray coffee cups from a shot “much easier.”) But regardless of the technology’s current, soulless aura, the seeds are clearly there. Who knows how fast it will evolve?
Cronenberg seems to think that the timeline will be pretty rapid. “The whole idea of actors and production will be gone. That’s the promise and the threat of artificial intelligence,” he continued. “Do we welcome that? Do we fear that? Both. It’s like nuclear fission, it’s ferocious and terrifying and it’s also incredibly useful. So, what do we do? I don’t know. I have no idea.” No wonder fellow horror auteur Alex Garland felt moved to include Oppenheimer’s infamous “I am become death” speech in Ex Machina, his own film about AI, all the way back in 2014.
For now, Cronenberg is still making his own movies. That includes his latest, The Shrouds, which explores some of these issues in the form of a new technology called GraveTech, invented by a grieving widower after the death of his wife to monitor the dead in their shrouds (per an official synopsis). This film was also deeply personal to Cronenberg in a way that technology could never reproduce. In an interview with Variety, the director explained that the film was partly inspired by the death of his wife, Carolyn, in 2017. They had been married for 43 years. “I don’t really think of art as therapy,” he said. “Grief is forever, as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t go away. You can have some distance from it, but I didn’t experience any catharsis making the movie.”
The Shrouds premiered at Cannes Monday night. It is still seeking U.S. distribution, but will be released in France September 25.