Richmond lecturer’s new sci fi movie uses AI to depict dystopian AI future
Author: Richmond American University London
What do you do when artificial intelligence starts taking over your life? Should you fear these new technologies, or should you embrace them? With the rise of ChatGPT, MidJourney and their cousins, it can feel like AI is taking over the world. What place is there still for the human creative spark? And can we learn to live with, or must we fight against these new creations?
Lavie Tidhar, an award-winning Film lecturer at Richmond American University London, decided to tackle these questions by making a movie about AI while using it. Lavie teaches on the new Science Fiction and Fantasy – Storytelling course as part of the MA in Film: Science Fiction and Fantasy alongside Dr Caleb Turner.
Written by Lavie and directed by Nir Yaniv, ‘Welcome to Your AI Future’ is an animated, dystopian sci fi film.
Lavie said, “We’ve been very focused on a human-centric, do-it-yourself creation process. So we were intrigued by the AI, but also very conscious of the discourse around it right now. We wondered how we could play with these new toys while addressing what they represent. Nir was inspired by the classic French film La Jetée, and called me up to ask if we could do something like that with MidJourney. I immediately said we could only do it if the film we made was about the AI – and something sparked. The result, I think, is quite unsettling. The rabbits really freak me out, and I’m the one who wrote them in!”
Opting to release Welcome To Your AI Future online, the team has no further plans to use AI again. Lavie’s next novel, The Circumference of the World, will be out this Fall.
For more information, visit https://www.nirtoons.com/ai
