Random thought-Tribeca and the AI problem

The only camera people covering the allAI feature at Tribeca

Tribeca has an AI (artificial intelligence) problem.

The last few years they had films pondering the place of AI in the world.  There was always one token doc. The first ones pondered what it was, the next few pondered if it was good and the latest bunch have largely been films that leaned into AI being okay. The only doc that they have run that was totally useless was the one last year which was one of the fathers of AI in which he said it was perfectly fine and anyone who didn't buy in was deluded because nothing bad will happen. It was such a pro AI film that it essentially said there was no down side and that it was better than puppies, Santa and peace on earth. 

This year the festival, in addition to playing a film whose title suggested that AI was probably okay, made a huge deal about showing the first epic feature film made entirely with AI.

The film writers lost their minds. Almost everyone stated they would not have anything to do with the film. A lfew of them said they would not cover the festival as a result.

I'm not a fan of AI. I hate that it learns on other people's work and then spits out a variation of what it learned. There is no creativity because to use it you have to give it parameters of what you want and it spits back something similar to what has gone before because it had to look at data and scrape it and copy it. 

What the festival doesn't realize is that Tribeca's embrace of AI fell flat because for a fest that pushes creativity and original storytelling in its programming as a big deal, an all AI film (based on what the technology can do right now) runs counter to its alleged principles. They want Tribeca to push creativity but AI just copies. You can't champion the new if you're using something that is just recreating the old.

The move to love AI despite the laundry list of issues was something that dominated a large number of my discussions with writers who wanted to express their feelings about what a bone head move it was (while trying to find out  how the film was - because they were certain I would see it and cover it).

I don't know how the film was but I went by the red carpet by accident and there were only two photographers from outlets that covered everything regardless.

I also should say that AI maybe more wide spread than we think. I quietly asked about some details about a couple of films and I was shut down and said that I shouldn't write about that or that if I was going to credit anything I should credit a certain person.  The original question was not  an AI question, however the answer made me think that the films had used AI since the people they wanted credited seemingly had no background in that area (say music). I think perhaps people are using it but will never admit to it.

I have no idea what Tribeca is going to do next year but they probably should get a position and stick to it.