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Following a flurry of online backlash, AMC Theaters said it would no longer allow an AI-generated short film to be shown at its US locations, in the latest example of the mounting resistance to AI\u2019s encroachment on the arts.<\/p>\n
The short film, Igor Alferov\u2019s \u201cThanksgiving Day,\u201d won first prize at the inaugural Frame Forward AI Animated Film Festival last week. Part of the prize involved getting a national two-week run in theaters with several major chains, including AMC. The film would play during in the advertising pre-roll that starts twenty minutes before the feature film begins.<\/p>\n
But news of the film\u2019s distribution quickly sparked outrage online, most of it targeting AMC, the largest movie chain in the world. After the Hollywood Reporter reached out to the company<\/a>, it provided a statement distancing itself from involvement in the decision to distribute the AI film, and said it would effectively pull it from its theaters.<\/p>\n \u201cThis content is an initiative from Screenvision Media, which manages pre-show advertising for several movie theatre chains in the United States and runs in fewer than 30 percent of AMC\u2019s US locations,\u201d AMC said in the statement. \u201cAMC was not involved in the creation of the content or the initiative and has informed Screenvision that AMC locations will not participate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThanksgiving Day\u201d is described as following a bear and his assistant platypus as they \u201ctravel through the galaxy on a spaceship that resembles a flying dumpster.\u201d That may be lending it too much credit: as it happens, the film resembles a dumpster, too. It plays out in such a commercial-style montage that watching its official upload on YouTube<\/a> may leave you coming away confused as to whether you just sullied your eyeballs with a badly stitched together trailer or the actual complete film, since basically nothing happens. <\/p>\n It was purportedly made using Gemini 3.1, presumably to write the story, and Nano Banana Pro to create the imagery. Joel Roodman, the head of Modern Uprising Studios, which co-organized the festival, glazed it as a \u201cmasterclass in original storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n It wouldn\u2019t have been the first time that AI films have been allowed to imbrue the silver screen. A selection of them were shown in August as part of the AI startup Runway\u2019s \u201cAI Film Festival\u201d at ten IMAX locations, leaving many critics unimpressed<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n