Hideo Kojima will stop at nothing to cosy up with his celebrity pals, but this generative AI short starring the Death Stranding maker alongside longtime collaborator Nicolas Winding Refn is proving a bridge too far for many.
The six-minute film debuted at the 79th Cannes Film Festival by Prada this week, promoting an upcoming event in New York City with retro sci-fi vibes.
While the full thing isn’t available online yet, you can watch a cut-down version embedded below. It shows Kojima and Winding Refn crashlanding on a hostile planet, and has been built as part of an experiment to better understand the “possibilities” of generative AI technology.
✨See You in New York✨@Prada
With@Kojima_Hideo @kuhlandhan @camsugarmusic pic.twitter.com/HrClMNocqB— byNWR Official (@NicolasWR) May 26, 2026
In a somewhat cringe-inducing statement, Winding Refn said that he and Kojima “have shared the feeling that we were somehow split from the same consciousness moving through different lives while orbiting the same obsessions”, which is something the short is supposed to reflect.
Excuse me while I wash the taste of vomit out of my mouth.
Unsurprisingly, the web has reacted harshly to this experiment, with one ResetEra user telling Kojima to “have fun in the festering slop pit with the rest of the AI weirdos”.
To be fair, the auteur hasn’t commented on the short just yet, but presumably he signed off on it all.
While it’s showing no signs of going away, generative AI has attracted strong resistance due to the fact it’s mostly trained on copyrighted material.
It also requires an enormous amount of energy and water to power, prompting genuine environmental concerns.
I doubt Kojima had much to do with this short so I’m not going to criticise him too hard here. But even if he did, I suppose creatives are always going to want to experiment with emerging new technologies.
Personally, I’m not a fan of generative AI as I believe “art” created with prompts can never have true purpose or meaning.
But I do think we need to collectively expand our vocabulary beyond “slop” to describe this sentiment!
[source x.com, via eurogamer.net]
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As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.