Over the last couple years artificial intelligence (AI) has grown at an alarmingly fast rate. What started as a computer that could solve math problems is now a multimillion dollar industry being used by tech, marketing and media companies. From phones, to cars, to education, companies and corporations are applying AI to presumably make life easier. This has left many people worried.

One of the biggest concerns that has followed AI since its creation is the possibility of it becoming so advanced that it replaces the need for human workers and this is especially true in the creative industries. While AI has been used in creative fields for a while now, it wasn’t until generative AI exploded in early 2023 when digital artists, writers, video game developers, photographers, and filmmakers became extremely worried about the possibility of their jobs being replaced.

Earlier this year, film studios publicly displayed their use of AI in their movies. These movies sparked a debate online centered around where to draw the line in the use of artificial intelligence in cinema?

Studios have been experimenting with computer-generated image technology to help in their productions for over a decade, but the expansion into generative artificial intelligence has been done quietly. In their article in The Hollywood Reporter, Winston Cho and Scott Roxborough write, “Behind closed doors, most corners of production, from writers’ rooms to VFX departments, have embraced generative AI tools. For every project that has faced blowback for using AI in some part of the production pipeline, there are dozens more that have quietly adopted the technology.”

It wasn’t until recently that filmmakers became open about their use of AI with famous examples being “The Irishman” (Scorsese, 2019), “The Lion King” (Favreau, 2019) and “Blade Runner” (Villeneuve, 2017) all of which used some form of AI in their visual effects. It wasn’t until recently that people were able to go back and realize this. These filmmakers used the technology to enhance human creation, not replace it. But what about a film that was completely created by a computer?

“Sunspring” (Sharp, 2016) is a short film released in 2016 at the Sci-fi London film festival. It was directed by Oscar Sharp and starred Thomas Middleditch, Elisabeth Gray and Humphrey Ker. Durning to credits of the film Sharp explains that the whole idea of the short came from the question, “Can a computer write a screenplay that will win a competition?” During production he hired a New York University AI researcher who created a “recurrent neural network” named Benjamin. Benjamin was then fed multiple science fiction film scripts, including movies like “Ghostbusters,” “Alien,” and “Star Wars.” It was also given the title of the short, “Sunspring,” and few prop, action, and dialogue prompts. From that it created a nine minute long script, a list of cast and crew members and lyrics for a short song. Sharp and his team then created the short film, sticking to the script exactly, and recording the song to use during the ending scene.

After the film was screened the general reaction to it was impressive, but incoherent. It’s almost bizarre watching this film with a 2024 lens. The dialogue sounds like it should make sense, but it doesn’t. This really was the first time generative AI was fully embraced by its creators and for the most part it was a success.

It’s fascinating to see how groundbreaking this technology was in 2016 and how primitive it looks in 2024. In the eight years since the release of “Sunspring,” generative models have gone from a simple computer that can be accessed by a university researcher to an incredibly complex learning algorithm that can be reached with a simple Google search. This growth and ease of access has led other independent filmmakers to use the tech. Little did they know what widespread controversy this would spark.

On March 10, 2023, “Late Night with the Devil” (Cairnes and Cairnes, 2024) was screened at the South by Southwest Film Festival, and a year later had a wider release in theaters. The film was directed by brothers, Cameron Cairnes and Colin Cairnes, and stars David Dastmalchian, Ingrid Torelli and Laura Gordon. The movie is set on Halloween 1977, where the fictional late night talk show “Night Owls” is airing what could be their last show. In an act of desperation, the host, Jake Delroy, brings a girl who survived a demonic cult, and the doctor who is studying her, onto the show. Things take a turn when, after many warnings against it, Jake insists the girl demonstrate a demonic possession on the air.

“Late Night with the Devil” had a lot of anticipation upon its release. With nothing but positive reviews coming from those who saw it at South by Southwest, and horror fans excited to see something fresh out of the genre, the indie film was slated to be a massive hit. As the first wave of audiences left the theater many of them were very impressed with the acting, set design and story, but there was one small detail that simply couldn’t be ignored, the blatant use of AI images.

During the film the story will cut back and forth between the fake broadcast of the show to what happens behind the scenes where commercials would be airing, and between those cuts are Halloween themed title cards that say the name of the show or phrases like “We’ll be right back.” This happens four times throughout the film. The first one of these cards is the most infamous, being a skeleton with about seven fingers on one hand, bizarrely wide legs and feet, surrounded by pumpkins with indistinguishable facial features, with the text “Night Owls, with Jake Delroy” at the bottom of the screen. This, along with two other title cards, were quickly posted online and dissected on social media, pointing to the strange designs and patterns as obviously being created by AI.

Many fans were disappointed and felt that an indie film would know better than to use artificial intelligence and the fact that the film was put in theaters right before the Writers Guild of America strike began didn’t help. Some audiences even called for a boycott of the movie and took to websites like Letterboxd to review-bomb it, with the rating reaching as low as 3.3 out of five stars.

Right before the film was put in theaters the directors released a statement to Variety saying, “In conjunction with our amazing graphics and production design team, all of whom worked tirelessly to give this film the 70’s aesthetic we had always imagined, we experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film. We feel incredibly fortunate to have had such a talented and passionate cast, crew and producing team go above and beyond to help bring this film to life. We can’t wait for everyone to see it for themselves this weekend.” While the conversation around this film was exploding, the directors’ statement was brought up many times, particularly the part about the images being edited. Many people either felt the editing job was done poorly or didn’t believe they were edited at all because of how obviously messed up some of the details are.

People began to realize that it wasn’t just these title cards that were created with AI, but also the print on the door to enter the set in the film was also a computer created image. This was way more than just a brief frame as it can be seen anytime the characters were on the main set. Audience criticism of the use of AI in “Late Night with the Devil” begs the question if the filmmakers were justified in their use of AI? Some argue that the use of AI is justified because this was done by a small film studio who may not have had the money to make the images themselves, and the images were ultimately incidental to the overall film. While others say that it’s a very slippery slope to excuse this type of AI in movies.

The use of AI in A24’s marketing of the film,“Civil War” (Garland, 2024), also created during the Writers Guild of America strike, has received similar criticism from audiences.

As the use of artificial intelligence in the film industry continues to develop, the impact it will have on the people behind the camera, like writers, crew and content developers, will need to be considered. One thing that filmmakers and moviegoers can agree on is that AI should be a tool, not a replacement.