More Filmmakers Are Experimenting with AI Than They’d Like to Admit

In 2023, generative artificial intelligence company Runway launched its AI Film Festival and received about 300 short-film submissions. A year later, the festival received over 3,000 and its 10 finalists premiered May 1 at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles.

In the last year, AI also has become a major point of contention in Hollywood, a topic of several labor strikes, and multiple panicked headlines. Meanwhile, filmmakers are using it.

“Among my peers, the reality is there’s more people using it than they’d like to admit,” said Paul Trillo, an AI filmmaker who spoke on a panel discussion at Wednesday’s AIFF moderated by IndieWire editor in chief Dana Harris-Bridson. “I’ve even seen people that pretend to be anti-AI, and they are using Midjourney, ChatGPT, they try and take a stance, but I know people are using things.”

Joining Trillo on the panel were Emmy-winning animator Joel Kuwahara (“The Simpsons,” “Bob’s Burgers”), tech writer, artist, and musician with indie rock band YACHT Claire L. Evans, and Runway founder Cristóbal Valenzuela.

Kuwahara said whenever he posts about AI on his Instagram, he faces a volley of vomit emojis.

“It’s almost become cool to hate AI in certain sects of the Internet,” Trillo said. “Part of me is like, ‘Oh, it’d be cool to hate AI.’”

He continued: “I always imagine AI haters smoking cigarettes and saying, ‘Fuck this.’ But it also feels like the more you hate…