After Amazon MGM dropped Luca Guadagnino‘s movie “Artificial” about Open AI founder Sam Altman, the Italian director has commented on his feelings on artificial intelligence, though he declined to speak about the film specifically.
When host Lilli Gruber of the show “Otto e Mezzo” on Italy’s La7 Attualità asked him on Friday why the film was perceived as dangerous, Guadagnino said, “Unfortunately, I can’t say much because we are right in the middle of this situation.”
Mubi is among the distributors still circling the film starring Andrew Garfield as Altman, which Amazon exited several months after striking a significant partnership with Open AI. The deal was set to expand OpenAI’s use of Amazon Web Services and develop custom AI models, which included a $50 billion investment on Amazon’s part.
It’s far from the first time this type of commercial and political pressure has happened, Guadagnino noted. “I was reading a great article yesterday recalling how, back in 2003, CBS cancelled a major drama series about the Reagans due to pressure from Republicans,” he said. “It was actually cancelled, though it later aired on a smaller channel.”
Here, Guadagnino pivoted to discuss the broader AI debate.
“To me, the issue isn’t artificial intelligence itself. I mean the application — or whatever we want to call it— the tool used to generate ‘products of knowledge’ or creative works, such as a research paper, a video, or an image,” he said. “From one perspective, it’s a technological gadget — and not a particularly sophisticated one, at that — full of flaws, though it will likely improve over time.”
“Naturally, the scientists who developed artificial general intelligence believe that — even though right now it’s mostly a matter of processing data scraped from everywhere, consuming vast amounts of energy and water — perhaps one day it will become independently sentient.”
Guadagnino said what interests him is how AI tools are changing the identity of the U.S. and the entire world. “What matters most to me is how people are completely changing the face, not just of society — in terms of consumption habits and how we interact with these tools — but the very face of the identity of a place like the United States and the entire world.”
“We shot part of the film in San Francisco — a wonderful city, one of the great, distinguished U.S. cities, Alfred Hitchcock’s city — a place of great beauty but also great despair, with so many homeless people, so many people living under the influence of fentanyl, while these wonderful, silent, self-driving cars glided past them,” the director explained.
“That, to me, is the perfect image to illustrate the theme. It is a disturbing image — more than just disturbing.”
Variety reported Sunday that Netflix, A24 and Focus were among the distributors that passed on picking up the film after Amazon dropped it. Ike Barinholtz co-stars as Elon Musk in the drama that is reported to have a $40 million budget.
