Two films premiered during the 2025 fall festival season that used generative AI as part of their creative process. Neither director of these films is a cheerleader for the technology, at least not in the threatening, \u201cyou are replaceable\u201d manner of Sam Altman-style AI evangelists. Instead, both take an agnostic stance, acknowledging the controversies and ethical issues surrounding generative AI while remaining optimistic about its potential as a democratizing force in filmmaking. Both were criticized, but only one of them\u2014Todd Rohal\u2019s Fuck My Son!\u2014practically caused a riot at its premiere. By comparison, Radu Jude\u2019s Dracula, which had its world premiere in August at the Locarno Film Festival, got off easy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like many of Jude\u2019s movies, Dracula is divided into segments, one of which revolves around a lazy filmmaker (Adonis Tan\u021ba) introduced in his bathrobe sitting in a bare, monklike cell. He apologetically explains that he\u2019s been charged with enhancing his new vampire movie with a pair of fictional Transylvanian AI software programs that have been fed pieces of iconic vampire media\u2014the original cut \u201conly\u201d got an 80% approval rating at its most recent test screening, you see.<\/p>\n
At various points throughout the film, Tan\u021ba interrupts the action to show us the fruits of this sloppy labor: A sequence \u201cinspired\u201d by Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula turns Coppola\u2019s ravishing visuals<\/a> into bizarre, melting shapes barely recognizable as pornography, while its Nosferatu<\/a> riff is quickly overtaken by persistent, annoying internet pop-up ads. It\u2019s all brazenly aesthetically offensive, and it feeds into Jude\u2019s larger point about the slow breakdown of everything from Romanian history to the way we perceive reality itself.<\/p>\n Speaking with The A.V. Club\u2014fittingly, with an AI-generated image of Donald Trump riding a giant kitten as his Zoom background\u2014Jude says that he \u201cwas put off a bit when there were reviews [of Dracula] saying the film shows that AI is really bad and it\u2019s a critique of AI,\u201d he says. \u201cI can see how it can be framed like that, but for me it was no critique. It was just another tool.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A filmmaker begs AI for help conjuring the Impaler in exclusive clip from Radu Jude’s Dracula<\/a>Exciting debuts and Radu Jude fill the Chicago International Film Festival<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI am well aware of the economic problems and of the inequalities that [AI] creates, and think it needs a certain regulation in the end,\u201d Jude adds. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily a bad thing. I think it can lead to interesting things, or even push cinema into different territories that [humanity] can do better than a machine.\u201d His primary concern is that AI undermines the \u201csupposed connection between an image and reality,\u201d noting that, in 2025, \u201cwhen you open [your] computer, the first thing you do when you see a photo is to ask yourself, \u2018is it AI or is it a real photo?’\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But although he calls this ontological unmooring \u201cscary\u201d\u2014Facebook, for example, is already being overrun with AI-generated images that spread misinformation, fueling the mistrust that\u2019s currently undermining American democracy\u2014Jude says he\u2019ll continue to use generative AI in his work. He recently used an AI audio program to narrate a short film he made for the National Museum Of Cinema in Turin, Italy, and while he acknowledges that \u201csomebody could say, an actress basically lost a job because she didn\u2019t do this for the film\u2026we\u2019re on a Zoom, and someone could say, a plane company lost a seat because you didn\u2019t travel\u2026There should be a balance to all this. But while the technology exists, I feel like I have the right to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n Jude adds that he sees a certain poetry in the images produced by these machines, which are sometimes \u201calmost [like] an impressionist painting in a trashy, digital way.\u201d Fuck My Son! director Todd Rohal, meanwhile, takes his art-history references a step farther: \u201cWhen I started getting AI pushback, I thought about Marcel Duchamp and the urinal in the art museum,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember learning about that [as an art student] and how exciting it felt to read about an artist making something that caused a stir, that that caused anger. But it\u2019s not a popular position to be in when it\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n In a phone interview with The A.V. Club, Rohal describes Fuck My Son! as \u201can exploitation movie,\u201d one that\u2019s designed to cause offense. (One could argue that, if you\u2019re not offended by a movie called Fuck My Son!, then it\u2019s a failure by its own standards.) Based on a story by alt-comics icon Johnny Ryan, the film is essentially a dirty joke told in slow motion as a woman (Tipper Newton) and her daughter are kidnapped from the parking lot of a strip mall and taken to the basement of an isolated farm house, where a Texas Chain Saw<\/a>-esque matriarch commands the woman to sexually service her son\u2014a drooling, flatulent, pustule-covered mutant in a prosthetic that makes Brendan Fraser\u2019s fat suit in The Whale<\/a> look tasteful.\u00a0<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not what upset audience members at the film\u2019s midnight world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF Midnight Madness screenings are notoriously rowdy, and the crowd was more than sufficiently warmed up as the movie began. Then a sequence that was visibly rendered by generative AI\u2014a fake ad parodying the self-aggrandizing reels that play before movies at major cinema chains\u2014appeared on screen. The laughter stopped, the mood shifted, and the movie never really recovered. One Reddit thread<\/a> called for the programmer who selected it to be fired.<\/p>\n The Letterboxd reviews coming out of that first screening were brutal, with the harshest critiques aimed at the film\u2019s use of AI. \u201cI wish I could say I\u2019m smart, and I predicted all of this,\u201d Rohal says. He adds that friends had warned him that \u201cpeople are going to get mad at you,\u201d but \u201cI\u2019m not on the internet much, so I couldn\u2019t comprehend why any thinking person could watch a movie like this and become upset about what they have been upset about.\u201d<\/p>\n Rohal\u2019s beef is with Hollywood. \u201cWe\u2019ve had movies that look like shit for the last twentysomething years. When you pitch a movie or a TV show at a studio, they want to know what they\u2019re getting before they get it, so you tell them it\u2019s going to look like something that already exists,\u201d Rohal says. \u201cMy film does not use AI in a way that advances things aesthetically, because that\u2019s just not the nature of this film. But I\u2019m shocked at people defending Hollywood movies as if we\u2019re in the middle of some renaissance that AI is going to destroy.\u201d<\/p>\n Rohal\u2019s other major AI gambit in Fuck My Son! involved the creation of the Meatie Mates, a friendly gang of drippy, turgid meat products who star in a popular in-universe children\u2019s cartoon.\u00a0Adults who spend a lot of time around Generation Alpha might recognize the Meatie Mates as the perverse cousins of Italian Brainrot characters like Tung Tung Tung Sahur and Ballerina Cappuccina. Rohal didn\u2019t know about any of that when he started working on Fuck My Son! (The trend didn\u2019t exist yet.) Rohal was just making fun of Veggie Tales, a now-formerly-Christian kids\u2019 cartoon whose characters don\u2019t have arms or legs, in part because they would be too expensive and time-consuming to animate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rohal says he spent \u201cmonths\u201d adding mouth syncing and compositing the Meatie Mates together by himself, by hand. \u201cI have the kidney stones to prove it,\u201d he jokes, estimating that \u201c30% [of the Meatie Mates animation] was AI, and then the rest of it was traditional digital compositing with After Effects.\u201d Both he and Jude modified the generative AI sequences in their films, for practical reasons, artistic reasons, or both. It reflects one point on which the directors are in total agreement: Both think of AI as a tool artists can use to expand what they can do creatively, not as a threat to human creativity itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI come from a country where there\u2019s no industry really, and where the stakes are low from a financial point of view. Our whole industry is a few million dollars, it\u2019s like the catering for a Hollywood movie,\u201d Jude says, noting that discussions about AI in his circles in Romania are more theoretical than the ones happening in Hollywood. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to lose in a certain way.\u201d He adds that, originally, his plan for Dracula was \u201cto pretend, for narrative purposes, that there\u2019s an AI machine generating [the] stories,\u201d while creating the visuals through traditional means. Then a chunk of the film\u2019s financing fell through; determined to get the movie done that year, Jude decided to actually use AI.<\/p>\n Like Jude, Rohal is working so far outside of the system that he feels he has nothing to lose. \u201cIt might be unpopular, but I really see it as a tool that can democratize film, truly. That scares millionaires, and I love work that scares the shit out of millionaires,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n In fact, Rohal is doubling down, adding AI trailers to the roadshow version of Fuck My Son! that were made by Damon Packard, creator of the (in)famous piece of psychedelic outsider art Reflections Of Evil<\/a>. Packard has pivoted to making films entirely with AI, which Rohal calls \u201ca complete extension of what he\u2019s always been doing and how he makes movies\u2026Being an absolutist about AI makes no sense [to me]. It just doesn\u2019t apply on every scale. If I have $1,000 I could give to an artist that I love, I don\u2019t care what medium he\u2019s using.\u201d<\/p>\n These filmmakers\u2019 stances on generative AI deviate significantly from mainstream opinion in Hollywood, where the technology is widely derided as \u201ctheft machines\u201d that serve no purpose other than depriving creatives of both money and credit for their work and likenesses. In 2023, the WGA added protections to its latest contract<\/a> that require studios to disclose when scripts are wholly or partially AI generated, and mandate that members cannot be fired for refusing to use AI at work. An AI cannot be a credited writer on a WGA project, and studios cannot ask members to rewrite AI-generated materials. (There are still no protections against studios using scripts they already own to train AI models.)\u00a0<\/p>\n The use of AI to replicate human performances was also a major sticking point in recent negotiations between video game companies and SAG-AFTRA, and the union plans to ask for protections<\/a> against actors\u2019 likenesses being used without their permission by generative AI programs when the TV\/Theatrical division\u2019s contracts come up for renewal in 2026. Two major points that arise again and again in these negotiations are compensation and consent. Financially speaking, Dracula and Fuck My Son! were made so far outside of the system that the compensation point is effectively irrelevant. But the question of consent might explain why the initial backlash against Rohal\u2019s film was more dramatic than that against Jude\u2019s.<\/p>\n When talking about the ethics of generative AI, Jude is a bit more measured than Rohal. And he\u2019s more explicit in the way he frames the generative AI in Dracula. The technology is baked into the concept, so no one can say they were blindsided by its use in the film; just to be sure, however, Jude has an actor set the audience up for what they\u2019re about to see. And critics, on the whole, have given Dracula the benefit of the doubt in terms of satire, acknowledging that, while they might not agree with Jude\u2019s use of the technology, they understand that there\u2019s a point and a purpose behind it.\u00a0<\/p>\n By comparison, Fuck My Son! unleashes its generative AI sequences on the viewer without any warning, assuming that they\u2019ll understand that they\u2019re part of a larger, proudly offensive joke. And while Rohal has a point when he says that he can\u2019t believe that \u201cthis is the thing people are upset about\u201d in an X-rated movie that revels in perversion and provocation, each passing shock-value moment makes it a little less likely that an audience member might be inclined to let the whole AI thing go. And, at least at that initial screening, they did not let it go.<\/p>\n If nothing else, Dracula and Fuck My Son! are a case study in the difference between an art film and an exploitation film, in packaging and presentation as well as in content. Dracula is being framed as an art film, screening for sophisticated audiences at more intellectually-minded festivals; Fuck My Son! is a midnight movie, playing to viewers who consider themselves part of a community, not just an audience. This dichotomy isn\u2019t one necessarily assigned by the filmmakers; Jude says that \u201cone of my models is Roger Corman, who used to use whatever he had around in order to finish a film. I\u2019m sure Roger Corman would have used AI with no shame.\u201d<\/p>\n But it\u2019s impossible to blame the audiences. In North America, at least, all we ever hear about artists and generative AI is from hostile tech types who take no small joy in announcing that hey, artists might think they\u2019re better than us now, but they won\u2019t be so smug when we\u2019ve automated them out of existence. A sneering contempt for community, hard work, and passion aside\u2014something that those against AI oppose as much as the technology\u2019s environmental impact and built-in tendency towards plagiarism\u2014big tech also has a financial interest in making us believe that AI is unavoidable. They have a product to push.<\/p>\n The sociopolitical context of generative AI is difficult to put aside, as it should be. We all have a right to be angry about one more bullshit late-capitalist scheme to suck the joy out of human existence in favor of increasing productivity for shareholders who won\u2019t even notice the soul-crushing sacrifices we\u2019re making on their behalf. (For a great film about this exhaustion, one might watch Radu Jude\u2019s Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World<\/a>.) But on the edges of these debates, outsiders like Radu Jude and Todd Rohal are experimenting with different modes of working with AI, ones that put human artists at the center of the equation instead of writing them out.\u00a0<\/p>\n For his part, Rohal says that, even if he could make films entirely on his own with AI, he wouldn\u2019t. \u201cI will always collaborate\u201d with other humans, he says. \u201cAnyone that\u2019s made something knows that your idea is the baseline, and then it just gets better with collaboration.\u201d But, as controversial as it might be, he wants to keep working with generative AI technology in his films. \u201cI\u2019m almost 50 years old,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd to feel passion come back into a thing that I felt there was no passion in anymore\u2026I can\u2019t then say, \u2018AI is shit.’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two films premiered during the 2025 fall festival season that used generative AI as part of their creative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-269744","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-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}