As creatives across the movie industry are making their stances known with AI, and even some titans like Martin Scorsese going all-in on the new technology, 20-year-old Kane Parsons has put himself firmly in the anti-AI camp, as he doesn't see any reason to use it creatively. The Backrooms director doesn't see much use for generative AI at all, especially for innovation.
Speaking to The Australian (via Variety), Parsons explained that he'd rather see the technology gone. "If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would," he said. "Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me."
Parsons described AI as "genuinely harmful" to creativity, arguing it doesn't help anyone come up with anything new. But, he would like to one day explore the themes of AI and its usage in a future film.
"What interests me more is interrogating it artistically. We already live in a world where you walk outside and there are billboards and signs that are obvious AI slop. That's become part of our visual reality. To me, generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot," he said.
Parsons' directorial debut, Backrooms, made its way to the top of the US box office last weekend. The film prides itself on the use of massive physical sets, and even hired a hugely tall man to play one of the entities in the movie, rather than making it entirely through CGI.