The director of Swedish rapper Yung Lean’s hit film Storm says artificial intelligence almost made him give up on filmmaking.
In an interview with Vulture published on Tuesday, Romain Gavras said he was frustrated by the wave of AI-generated copies of music videos.
Gavras directed the video for “Gener8ion,” an audiovisual project he runs with French producer Sulkin.
The clip, which has been viewed more than 40 million times since being posted in April, follows Lean’s bullying at a boarding school before the boys he has been torturing begin a choreographed dance around him in a class photo.
In September, social media users began using artificial intelligence to recreate a dance scene from “The Tempest,” replacing Lean and the students with a variety of new characters, including animals and celebrities.
“My daughter sent me the first photo I saw,” Gavras said. “She said, ‘Look, this dog is doing this.'”
It was fun for a while, he said, but the novelty quickly wore off as copies seemed to spread everywhere.
“It makes me feel bad for all the people who put so much effort into our videos,” Gavras said. “Trends like this can make even good work look crappy. Part of me wants to quit filmmaking, move back to Greece and become an olive farmer.”
Gavras said he didn’t want to make any comments about artificial intelligence, but he found himself embroiled in the debate when people started referring to films that artificial intelligence couldn’t achieve as “Storm.”
“The reaction from the technologists was, ‘Oh, really? Artificial intelligence will never be possible?’ And then they started replicating it. So we were forced to have this conversation. It was a nightmare,” Gavras said.
He added that he has turned down several AI companies that have approached him about licensing the film.
“An economic model is coming that we don’t want to be a part of,” he said.
Yet even as AI-generated productions proliferate online, Gavras said the technology can mimic elements of the film but has yet to create anything with the same originality or human spark.
“They miss Yung Lam’s swagger. He looked like a dangerous baby. The imperfection of human nature, and the inner life of a dancer or even just a smoker, has not been fully realized,” he said.
Last month, Lean and dancers performed at the MTV Video Music Awards. Video of the performance has since been viewed nearly 14 million times.
Gavras isn’t the only filmmaker weighing the impact of artificial intelligence on creative work. Other major Hollywood directors have raised similar concerns: Guillermo Del Toro said AI could deprive future filmmakers of the opportunity to learn their craft, while Tim Burton said AI takes away the humanity behind the art.