After Amazon MGM canceled the release of Luca Guadagnino’s film “Artificial,” about open AI founder Sam Altman, the Italian director commented on his feelings toward artificial intelligence, but declined to discuss the film specifically.
Asked by host Lili Gruber of the show Otto e Mezzo, which airs Friday on Italy’s La7 Attualità, why the film is perceived as dangerous, Guadagnino said: “Unfortunately, we are in the middle of this situation so I can’t say much.”
Mubi is one of the distributors still handling the film, which stars Andrew Garfield as Altman, but Amazon pulled out of the distributor a few months after forming a key partnership with Open AI. The deal is aimed at expanding OpenAI’s use of Amazon Web Services to develop custom AI models and includes a $50 billion investment from Amazon.
Guadagnino noted that this is not the first time this type of commercial and political pressure has occurred. “I was reading a great article yesterday and was reminded of how CBS canceled a major drama series about Reagan in 2003 due to pressure from Republicans,” he said. “It was actually canceled, but it was later aired on a smaller channel.”
Guadagnino then pivoted to a broader discussion of AI.
“For me, the problem is not about artificial intelligence per se. I’m talking about the tools used to generate applications, or whatever you want to call them, ‘products of knowledge’ or creative works, such as research papers, videos, images, etc.,” he says. “From a certain point of view, this is a technological gadget, not very sophisticated, but full of flaws, which can be improved over time.”
“Naturally, the scientists who developed artificial general intelligence believe that perhaps one day it will have independent sentience, even if it currently processes data collected from everywhere and consumes enormous amounts of energy and water.”
Guadagnino said he is interested in how AI tools are changing identity in the United States and around the world. “What’s most important to me is how people are not only completely changing the face of society in terms of their consumption habits and how they interact with these tools, but how they’re changing the very face of the identity of places like the United States and the world at large.”
“We shot part of this movie in San Francisco, a wonderful city, one of the great and famous cities of the United States, the city of Alfred Hitchcock. It’s a place of great beauty, but it’s also a place of great despair, with so many homeless people, so many people living under the influence of fentanyl, and these wonderful, quiet self-driving cars drive past them,” the director explained.
“To me, that’s the perfect image to illustrate the theme. It’s not just disturbing, it’s disturbing.”
Variety reported on Sunday that Netflix, A24 and Focus were among the distributors that passed on the film after Amazon stopped releasing it. Ike Barinholtz co-stars as Elon Musk in the drama, which has a reported $40 million budget.
