Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro publicly said “fuck AI” when accepting the Vanguard Tribute for his film Frankenstein at the Gotham Awards.
Standing at the podium with actors Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac at his sides, the Pan’s Labyrinth director had some choice words when referencing generative-AI.
“I understood that back then, through her work and the first glimpse of Boris Karloff, that I did not belong in the world the way my parents, the way the world expected me to fit,” the filmmaker said. “That my place was in a faraway land inhabited only by monsters and misfits. They have been my kin ever since.”
“So to return to this tale now at 61 with artists as extraordinary as Oscar and Jacob has been truly one of the greatest privileges of my life, and in them, I found another family,” he added.
The director returned to the podium to issue his takedown of AI after Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi issued brief statements.
“I’d like to tell the rest of our extraordinary cast and our crew that the artistry of all of them shines on every single frame of this film that was willfully made by humans, for humans,” he said. “The designers, builders, make-up, wardrobe team, cinematographers, composers, editors, this tribute belongs to all of them. I would like to extend our gratitude and say: Fuck AI.”
The use of generative-AI in movies has become a hot-button topic in Hollywood, with some of the industry’s most acclaimed directors casting critical eye on it.
“I’m not negative about generative AI,” Avatar director James Cameron said. “I just wanted to point out we don’t use it on the ‘Avatar’ films. We honor and celebrate actors. We don’t replace actors. That’s going to find its level. I think Hollywood will be self-policing on that. We’ll find our way through that. But we can only find our way through it as artists if we exist. So it’s the existential threat from big AI that worries me more than all that stuff.”
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