Ugh, Even Steven Soderbergh Is On the AI Bandwagon

Steven Soderbergh is a freakishly prolific filmmaker who has always embraced the changing technologies of his artform. He dabbled in digital years before his contemporaries, for example. This is a director who can and does do everything, from blockbusters to experimental indies to helming the Oscars. Still, I never pegged him as a guy who would be gung-ho for AI. Why would the man who exemplifies the magic of human ingenuity and cinephilia decide that the plagiarism machine was his new favourite toy? Darren Aronofsky selling out made sense. That dude’s been downhill since Satoshi Kon died and he ran out of things to ‘homage.’ But Steve? Dude.

In a new interview with Filmmaker to promote his latest film, The Christophers, Soderbergh said he was using AI to complete his upcoming documentary on John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Said the director, ‘AI has been helpful in creating thematically surreal images that occupy a dream space rather than a literal space. And that’s been really fun because you need a Ph.D. in literature to tell it what to do. But like every other piece of technology, it desperately requires very close human supervision.’

So, you need the theft-wagon to create surreal dream-like images? Are you familiar with Yoko Ono’s entire career? Or your own? It’s also so insulting to artists everywhere to claim that you need to be super educated to use it properly. Oh, so you’re the real genius for relying on this crap? Nobody’s buying it. You’d think Soderbergh would see the irony of using AI, an environmentally disastrous concept that’s sucking up the planet’s water, to make a movie about Yoko, who has dedicated some of her most famous artworks to looking after our one planet.

Soderbergh also said he plans to use ‘a lot of AI’ for his next feature, an epic about the Spanish-American War, which will star recent Oscar nominee Wagner Moura. ‘It’s a weird time to be making movies,’ he said. Yeah, and you’re making it needlessly worse!

Hannah Einbinder was right: these people are losers and we should give them all a swirly.