Natasha Lyonne Is Wishy-Washy After Backlash to Her AI Movie

Natasha Lyonne incurred considerable backlash in April after she announced that she would be collaborating with Brit Marling (The OA) on Uncanny Valley, a film developed by Asteria, the AI-focused production company she co-founded with her partner, Bryn Mooser. It wasn’t entirely clear at the time how AI would be utilized in the film, other than for “worldbuilding,” but the statement she released actually sounded like it was written by AI.

“Imagine if Dianne Wiest and Diane Keaton, at their loquacious best, decided to take a journey through The Matrix for sport, only to find themselves holding up an architectural blueprint, and you’ll have a sense of the adventure we’ve been on. Coming together as a trio in cahoots with the astounding imagineers at Asteria, to worldbuild this film at scale, has been a synergistic dream come true.”

“Synergistic dream come true”? That’s not what one wants to hear from the star of Poker Face and But I’m a Cheerleader.

This week, in an interview with Variety, Lyonne addressed the backlash, which she has not appreciated. “It’s comedic that people misunderstand headlines so readily because of our bizarro culture of not having reading comprehension,” Lyonne told the publication. “Suddenly I became some weird Darth Vader character or something. That’s crazy talk, but God bless!”

“I’ve never been inside of one of those before,” she added, referencing the backlash. “It’s scary in there, if anyone’s wondering. It’s not fun when people say not nice things to you. It grows you up a bit.”

That’s the thing, though: What exactly is there to misunderstand about a “synergistic dream” and using AI to “worldbuild this film at scale”?

Lyonne insists, however, that it’s an “ethical” model of AI and that it only trains on cleared works, while stressing it’s not a “generative AI” movie. “It’s all about protecting artists and confronting this oncoming wave.”

She also said AI would only be used for set extensions. In other words, her AI doesn’t steal from artists, but it does steal jobs from those normally hired to create set extensions, which, I guess, means she values one kind of artist over another.

That said, AI is coming. It’s going to become a big part of the industry. There’s not much any of us can do to stop it. We expect this from the corporate overlords and Zaslavs of the world. It stings a lot more when it comes from someone we respect.

Source: Variety