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Danny Boyle has confirmed speculation that his new film “Ink” used AI for some selective sequences.
The “Trainspotting” director debuted his new film on the Fall festival circuit the other day to very good reviews. The film, starring Jack O’Connell and Guy Pearce, deals with the rise of British tabloid journalism and Rupert Murdoch’s attempts to make his The Sun newspaper a rival to the Daily Mirror.
Some reviews pointed out that some scenes, mostly footage of famous (and infamous) figures of the period, seemed to have been crafted using AI. Specifically, scenes that reanimate old images of the Kray twins and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Speaking with Vanity Fair at the Telluride Film Festival, Boyle was straight up about it, confirming that:
“There’s about 30 seconds of it in our movie where we animate a couple of old photographs.”
He then amusingly added: “Oh, and there’s some mice. It’s very good for animals, and we had some mice that run around The Sun newsroom.” Boyle adds his opinion of the use of AI in films shouldn’t matter:
“It doesn’t really matter what I think about AI. It matters what 20-year-olds think about it. Is the honest truth. My opinion of it is that it’s a very useful tool in many ways, provided you use it respectfully and provided you pay actors if you’re going to replace them with some kind of AI embodiment.”
That said, at the film’s press conference at the Venice Film Festival earlier this week, he expressed concern about the rise of AI in certain areas – specifically journalism:
“The danger with the tech giants and their AI is that they will be able to replace journalism. They’ll be able to have an AI journalist who’s much more efficient, cheaper, etcetera, etcetera, and will that AI journalist speak truth to the power that created it?”
“Ink” hits cinemas on December 11th ahead of streaming on Netflix on January 8th.
The post Boyle Confirms AI Maggie Thatcher In “Ink” appeared first on Dark Horizons.
