{"id":271814,"date":"2026-02-07T04:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T04:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/271814\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T04:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T04:52:10","slug":"daniel-kwan-calls-for-coordinated-entertainment-industry-ai-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/271814\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Kwan Calls for Coordinated Entertainment Industry AI Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDaniel Kwan<\/a> has a lot to say on the subject of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Oscar-winning filmmaker \u2014 one half of The Daniels directing team behind Everything Everywhere All at Once<\/a> alongside Daniel Scheinert<\/a> \u2014 returned to Sundance<\/a> in January alongside Scheinert and their producer Jonathan Wang<\/a> to support the world premiere of Focus Features\u2019 The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist<\/a>, which they produced for another directing team in Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmid a busy festival schedule, Kwan ducked into the Pendry Park City to headline the THR x Autodesk AI<\/a> and Independent Filmmaking\u00a0panel presented in partnership with the Berggruen Institute on Jan. 25. The program also featured conversations with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, filmmaker Noah Segan, producer Janet Yang and Autodesk\u2019s Matthew Sivertson in chats moderated by THR\u2019s Mia Galuppo and Stacey Wilson Hunt. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJoseph Gordon-Levitt, Janet Yang, Noah Segan, Daniel Kwan and Matthew Sivertson ahead of the THR x Autodesk \u201cAI and Independent Filmmaking\u201d\u00a0panel at Sundance.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n

\n\tKwan kicked things off, but before diving headfirst into all things AI, the filmmaker looked back on a milestone Sundance anniversary. He and Scheinert made their Sundance debut 10 years ago with the Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano starrer Swiss Army Man, which was acquired out of the fest by A24 and earned them best director trophies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTen years is kind of wild,\u201d Kwan said, before launching into a warning about the social media trend that inspired countless users to post retrospective 2016 photos on multiple platforms from Instagram to TikTok to Threads. \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking a lot about 2016 because of that trend right now. By the way, don\u2019t do that. They\u2019re using that to train their machines on you to show how people age. Stop it, stop posting stuff, OK? Just be careful, OK? Be careful with these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tActually, Kwan emphasized care, caution and vigilance throughout the nearly 30-minute discussion, which covered The AI Doc, the recently launched Creators Coalition on AI<\/a> and the urgency to participate at this critical juncture before AI companies set the rules of engagement and leave various industries and the general public to pick up the pieces: \u201cWe are not ready for this and we are the collateral damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are currently in a transition,\u201d Kwan acknowledged. \u201cThings are coming to an end, but that also means something else is coming. If we can all agree that that\u2019s true, we first have to mourn the things that are ending but protect what really matters in that mourning. Once we see what\u2019s coming to an end, we can protect what matters and plant the seeds for what\u2019s coming next. So much of my work is motivated by that one single principle, whether it\u2019s in AI or the stories I\u2019m telling, the movies that Daniel and I are trying to make as this old world ends. What can we protect? What can we fight for? What can we plant for the next world?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the immediate future, they\u2019ll be planting The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. The film is set for release on March 27, and Kwan said it covers all the main AI issues and features nearly all of the big names from the industry. What it doesn\u2019t cover is his regret in making it. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA wonderful team worked for the past over three years on this doc, and we spent a lot of time just trying to figure out how do we show people what the main drivers are behind everything that\u2019s happening? How do we get past all the bullshit, all the hype and all of that noise to show people some sort of way to regain some agency?\u201d he explained. \u201cEvery other month I regretted saying yes to this project, if I\u2019m being very honest. Honestly, I\u2019m sick of talking about AI. Who else is sick of talking about AI? I don\u2019t want to just be negative because this technology is both good and bad at the same time. Just like any other technology, every tool can be used for good and for bad. You can build things and break things with the same tool. The problem is with human nature, and entropy, in general. Oftentimes, building things is much harder than breaking things and, right now, the breaking things is much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, Kwan noted how AI technology can both be \u201camazing\u201d and \u201cterrible\u201d for filmmakers. \u201cThe one thing that we all have to agree on is that this technology is incompatible with our current systems, our current institutions, our current labor laws. It carves a bunch of lines through all these walls that we\u2019ve put up over the last 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs AI carves those lines, Kwan said it is imperative that industries, like Hollywood, band together to help set the guardrails. \u201cThis is an all-hands-on-deck situation,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do we imagine a world where this tool is not just something that we\u2019re fighting but also something that can transform our industry to make it much better? Be honest, our industry is not perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKwan speaks during the THR x Autodesk \u201cAI and Independent Filmmaking\u201d\u00a0panel at Sundance.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n

\n\tThe moment during the panel that generated the most laughter and response from the nearly 100 or so guests in the room came when Kwan used a \u201csex positive\u201d analogy to describe the best response to widespread adoption of AI tools.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a crude one, but it\u2019s worth saying because it sticks,\u201d he explained before launching into it. \u201cWe\u2019re all sex positive here [so imagine if] you have a relationship with someone. They\u2019re loving and it\u2019s great, but they\u2019re not always the best communicator. They say, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re having an orgy. We\u2019re bringing a bunch of people over. Doesn\u2019t that sound great?\u2019 And you\u2019re like, \u2018Hold on. Who\u2019s coming? What are the rules? What are the safe words?\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018No, no, no, no. Look at the tools and the toys we have. We\u2019re going to have a dungeon.\u2019 This is what the tech industry feels like to a lot of crew members.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Kwan has a lot to say on the subject of artificial intelligence. The Oscar-winning filmmaker \u2014 one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,113855,153678,113857,592,153679,111,139,69,27001,69176,145,153680],"class_list":{"0":"post-271814","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-daniel-kwan","12":"tag-daniel-scheinert","13":"tag-everything-everywhere-all-at-once","14":"tag-festivals","15":"tag-jonathan-wang","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-sundance","20":"tag-sundance-2026","21":"tag-technology","22":"tag-thr-events"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}