{"id":600922,"date":"2026-04-13T09:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T09:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/600922\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T09:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T09:47:09","slug":"soderbergh-says-hes-obligated-to-use-ai-on-john-lennon-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/600922\/","title":{"rendered":"Soderbergh Says He’s \u201cObligated\u201d To Use AI On John Lennon Doc"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier in April, Traffic, Magic Mike, and Ocean\u2019s 11 director Steven Soderbergh told Filmmaker Magazine that audiences can expect \u201ca lot of AI\u201d in upcoming projects<\/a>. This includes a documentary about John Lennon\u2019s final interview. It sparked a lot of confusion, given the ickiness of using the iffy technology on the last words of a dead man<\/a>, but also that Soderbergh has had no issues releasing multiple bangers a year without sacrificing creative control. In a follow-up discussion with Variety, Soderbergh defends his reasoning: He\u2019s built differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m only scared of things I don\u2019t understand. So I felt obligated to engage with it,\u201d says Soderbergh. \u201cThere are some people that I have absolute love and respect for that refuse to engage with it. That\u2019s their privilege. But I\u2019m not built that way. You show me a new tool. I want to get my hands on it and see what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that Soderbergh is quick to use new gizmos in his process. He filmed both 2018\u2019s Unsane and 2019\u2019s High Flying Bird off his iPhone. But he is being a little coy as to why his peers are steamed at him. The controversy around AI in Hollywood isn\u2019t just about talent or effort, but about ethics and legality.<\/p>\n

The major AI firms are still sobering up from the \u201cbreak stuff\u201d phase and now begging governments around the world to void copyright laws just for them<\/a>, since LLMs are routinely coagulated from plagiarized works. The push for AI, especially in entertainment, is a snake oil campaign, with \u201cviral\u201d AI videos often turning out to be manipulated sales pitches<\/a>. Despite that it\u2019s still not profitable! OpenAI just shuttered Sora after bleeding a million per day<\/a>. And not to be a nag about the environmental impact<\/a>, but you should do yourself some diligence by Googling \u201cdo I need water to live?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Plus, it looks horrendous! In January, Darren Aronofsky teamed up with Google to develop a mini-series about the American Revolution\u00a0generated through DeepMind. It was filled with historical anachronisms (not the fun needledrop kind), the object impermanence that still beleaguers AI video and that lenticular sheen you usually see in Spirit Halloween paintings. Soderbergh is the most talented major director to be lured in by AI so far and does admit it\u2019s probably just a fad. But it\u2019s a fad he wants in on.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive years from now, we all may be going. \u201cThat was a fun phase,\u201d Soderberg tells Variety. \u201cWe may end up not using it as much as we thought we were going to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier in April, Traffic, Magic Mike, and Ocean\u2019s 11 director Steven Soderbergh told Filmmaker Magazine that audiences can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-600922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}