In a former hemstitching workshop where artisans sewed pleats for Stockholm\u2019s 19th-century bourgeoisie, a distinctly 21st-century craft is taking root: AI film-making.<\/p>\n
One day last week, an actor, director and composer squeezed into a tiny studio booth to record a voiceover for their next AI release. Critics disparage AI movies as \u201cautomated slop\u201d or cheating, and fume at what they claim to be industrial-scale copyright theft. But this had a distinctly homespun feel, the little team fussing over a monologue by a poetic Scottish gorilla inhabiting a transhumanist cyberpunk universe. It was a bit like recording the Archers, one of them joked.<\/p>\n
This was a production from a new era by Gossip Goblin, the nom de plume of a tiny kitchen-table AI film-making outfit led by Zack London, whose audience is growing fast \u2013 he calculates more than 500m views.<\/p>\n
\u2018I have found myself at the inception of a new thing where there are no rules,\u2019 says Zack London. Photograph: Rebecka Uhlin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Gossip Goblin\u2019s speciality is grotesque and satirical sci-fi shorts that riff on the absurdities and anxieties of the technological zeitgeist, all knocked together at low cost in London\u2019s Stockholm apartment using off-the-shelf AI tools and with a team of eight collaborators dotted across Europe. But this is no longer a hobby. Heavyweight LA talent agents, movie producers, screenwriters, studios, streamers and A-list actors are clamouring to get involved, with some leading Hollywood players boarding flights to Stockholm in the coming weeks, intrigued not least by Gossip Goblin\u2019s surging Instagram<\/a> and YouTube audience numbers.<\/p>\n London, 35, a transplant from California to Sweden, has been making AI films for just over three years, but the spotlight is now intensifying on his anarchic, dystopian universe of tech-human hybrid characters. Mathieu Kassovitz, the award-winning director of La Haine, said he had shivered<\/a> when he saw the emotion in the eyes of one of London\u2019s AI-generated actors. Last month the podcaster Joe Rogan declared<\/a>: \u201cIt\u2019s amazing \u2013 I might follow that guy.\u201d Rogan showed his hundreds of millions of viewers a clip of one of London\u2019s characters plugged into a \u201cdream-spool\u201d and experiencing a hallucinogenic parallel life as a goldfish.<\/p>\n A recurring Gossip Goblin theme is the quandary of what it means to be human in a world of ever more powerful technology. Illustration: Gossip Goblin<\/p>\n AI film-makers stand on the brink of a breakthrough that backers believe will unleash a new wave of creativity. A new cadre, no longer blocked by red lights from studios, feel liberated. They don\u2019t care that the Oscars<\/a> and the Cannes film festival have in recent weeks ruled AI out of the running for some of their most prestigious prizes.<\/p>\n \u201cWay back in films in the 1920s it was anarchy, but people with good ideas could get them through without having to go through the gatekeepers saying \u2018that\u2019s not going to work\u2019,\u201d London says. \u201cI have found myself at the inception of a new thing where there are no rules.\u201d<\/p>\n Other AI film-makers, such as Neural Viz<\/a> and Kavanthekid<\/a>, are also gathering millions of views in an emerging culture that defies the negative reactions to recent initiatives \u2013 including a feature starring AI versions of the late actor Val Kilmer<\/a> and the attempt to launch the career of the AI-generated actor \u201cTilly Norwood<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n But the rising movement triggers despair for critics who fume about \u201cugly slop\u201d and \u201cAI sludge\u201d, robots replacing human creativity and copyright piracy in AI model training. Artists from Elton John<\/a> to Scarlett Johansson<\/a> and the Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan have called the training of AI models theft, but London\u2019s view is \u201cthat ship has kind of sailed\u201d.<\/p>\n London argues it is impossible to determine how the models\u2019 intelligence is formed, as they have absorbed such vast bodies of information. \u201cIt\u2019s all been mushed into a grey goo,\u201d he says. Instead, film-makers must ensure what they produce is not theft: \u201cIf I\u2019m making Darth Vader kill Mickey Mouse then I\u2019m stealing \u2026 Where it lands for me is [the question of] can you demonstrate sufficient authorship?\u201d<\/p>\n Gossip Goblin can release new shorts every few days. Illustration: Gossip Goblin<\/p>\n Meanwhile, AI video-making capabilities advance quickly, audiences grow, and big money shifts into the field. Plans to build more traditional TV and film sound stages are being frozen<\/a>. Pinewood, where Star Wars and Bridgerton were shot, recently secured permission to build an AI datacentre in Buckinghamshire where new studios had been planned.<\/p>\n London creates his world through his laptop, buying credits for off-the-shelf AI image and video generation tools including Midjourney, the Chinese model Seedance<\/a> and Google\u2019s Nano Banana. Speed is a key advantage. He can release Instagram shorts every few days, teasing different aspects of his dystopian world populated by characters living in nature-free cybernetic slums who are part \u201cwet-ware\u201d (flesh) and part hardware, which allows them to be zapped into parallel and more appealing universes \u2013 if they can afford it. With each short, he creates what Hollywood craves: fresh intellectual property.<\/p>\n \u201cOur characters are cybernetic or larger than life, in a Guy Ritchie\/Terry Gilliam realm \u2013 slightly on edge and extreme,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going for quiet, subtle, Olivia Colman, Anthony Hopkins films. We adapt to the limits of AI acting.\u201d<\/p>\n But London, who writes the scripts, also digs for emotional heart. In one story, an aristocrat living in Versailles-style luxury becomes jaded from the multitude of simulated experiences he has zapped into his brain. Nothing moves him any more: not a giant whale slaying sailors nor life in an ancient Persian court. It is only when he experiences the purity of the short lifespan of a fruitfly that he comes alive.<\/p>\n London\u2019s first 20-minute film, The Patchwright, got 11m views, and he has attracted a respected songwriter and producer, Sebastian Furrer, to score his next longer film. Furrer, who worked with the Swedish EDM superstar Avicii, said he was attracted in part by the \u201csometimes uncomfortable\u201d quality of the often extremely heightened sequences.<\/p>\n \u201cI like that because it makes you feel something,\u201d Furrer said. \u201cThe AI here is more like a tool. The only thing I object to about AI is to use it to make things for you. There needs to be a human behind it. That\u2019s what Zack is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018There needs to be a human behind it,\u2019 says Sebastian Furrer (centre), a composer and music producer, working with Zack London (left) and Sam Dale (right), a voice actor, in Stockholm. Photograph: Rebecka Uhlin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n A resonant recurring theme of Gossip Goblin\u2019s work is the quandary of what it means to be human in a world of ever more powerful technology. This is no longer a niche sci-fi speculation but a reality for millions, as AI seeps into everywhere from the office to the classroom.<\/p>\n AI film-makers can also satirise trends almost instantly. London has recently tackled looksmaxxing<\/a> and ICE raids. These quickly-made vertical videos are inevitably hit and miss but some get up to 7m views, with a huge audience among young men \u2013 but very few women.<\/p>\n An AI film-maker\u2019s other advantage is cost. Using the AI models and paying for human editing, design, acting and music skills totals to about $500,000 an hour, London estimates, a fraction of conventional production, although bigger-name scriptwriters and actors would push it higher. London insists he and his collaborators \u2013 not the AI \u2013 are in control. To get the right performances from the AI characters, he has to repeatedly prompt the systems.<\/p>\n A key question, as Hollywood buzzes around London, is whether AI film-makers actually need the studios or streaming companies. The future of distribution is likely to be direct to consumers, London says. But for now a studio appeals to him, in part to establish AI film in the wider culture and show \u201cwe are not the same as the person making Fruit Love Island TikTok<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet as AI is tearing down the barriers to entry to the film industry, London says he is worried that \u201cthere\u2019s a tsunami of shit on the horizon\u201d. Whether Gossip Goblin is part of that wave will be a question of taste. But for now, Hollywood calls.<\/p>\n