Oscar-nominated animated movie “Arco” tells the story of a younger boy in a future the place humanity lives in concord with nature, removed from the robots and synthetic intelligence shaping our current.
For first-time director Ugo Bienvenu, who drew the entire movie by hand, there was by no means any probability he would resort to utilizing AI.
“That’s why I make science fiction,” the French director informed AFP. “It was to say to this generation: ‘Maybe there are other paths, maybe there are other things to imagine.'”
The graphic novel illustrator, 38, says he’s alarmed by society’s growing dependence on synthetic intelligence, which he insists is inferior to the issues it’s getting used to exchange.
“It’s like wanting to saw off your own leg just because you have a great crutch,” he stated.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the physique that can hand out the Oscars in Hollywood on March 15, final 12 months up to date its guidelines to say it was impartial on the expertise.
“Generative Artificial Intelligence and other digital tools… neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination,” it stated in April. “The Academy and each branch will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship.”
‘Nobody actually needs to make use of it’
The transfer got here after a furor over the usage of AI in greatest image contenders “The Brutalist” — the place Adrien Brody’s Hungarian accent was artificially smoothed out — and “Dune: Part Two,” wherein sure characters had their eye shade modified.
This season, two Oscar-eligible animated shorts brazenly acknowledged their use of AI, however didn’t get a nomination.
For Bienvenu, the reliance on AI within the artistic course of is harmful as a result of it dangers permitting the creativeness to wither.
“If we tell ourselves that the machine will do it for us, we never make the mistakes that allow us to access our subconscious” the place true creativity lies, he stated.
Bienvenu, who spoke to AFP on the sidelines of the Oscars nominees luncheon in Beverly Hills final month, stated many conversations on the gathering had touched on the usage of AI in filmmaking — a key sticking level within the writers’ and actors’ strikes that crippled Hollywood in 2023.
“Everyone is more or less on the same page,” he stated. “Nobody really wants to use it.”
In January, greater than 800 creatives, together with actresses Scarlett Johansson and Cate Blanchett, in addition to director Guillermo Del Toro, revealed an open letter accusing AI giants of “theft.”
The Mexican filmmaker, whose “Frankenstein” is competing this 12 months for the most effective image Oscar, in 2022 stated animation created by AI is an “insult to life itself.”
Bienvenu shares that alarm.
“The real danger is that we… become weaker intellectually,” he says. “It’s not about protecting our jobs, it’s about what makes us human.”
“Fiction is about sharing experiences,” he says — a course of that helps us to be “emotionally prepared when something serious happens to us in life, so we don’t fall apart.”
Too a lot of recent life is dominated by machines that may solely regurgitate what has come earlier than, says Bienvenu.
“Today, there are people who wear clothes made by robots, and eat food made by robots — basically, they’re the poor,” he stated. “And now, this same group will be consuming fiction made by robots.”
The huge firms that make AI don’t pay the true value of their product, Bienvenu says, and one thing should be executed to degree the enjoying area.
He suggests levying a tax on the massive volumes of water utilized by firms to chill their server farms, an quantity one examine revealed in December discovered exceeded the quantity of bottled water consumed across the planet yearly.
“AI isn’t free,” says Bienvenu. “It has physical repercussions and impacts on our subconscious.”
© 2026 AFP