Just over 2 minutes into an early episode of the new short film series, On This Day…1776, we see a hand sweep tenderly over the title page of Thomas Paine's just-published firebrand pamphlet Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America.
Only, in that moment, "America" vanishes, replaced by the all-caps nonsense text "Aamereedd."
It's a classic tell that we're in the presence of generative AI.
But this isn't the gotcha moment you might think it is. The filmmakers behind the series, led by executive producer Darren Aronofsky, are fully embracing generative video. That's as big a driving force behind "On This Day…1776" as the intention to tell stories of the American Revolution in this 250th anniversary year.
Aronofsky is known for directing high-profile films including Black Swan, The Whale and Mother, but he's also the founder of Primordial Soup, the AI-first studio that created On This Day…1776. Its larger ambition, according to its website, is to fuse art and technology into a new creative model, "merging bold narrative, emotional depth, and experimental work flows." That is, the studio wants to use AI to create bona fide art.
Good luck with that.
Because Darren? Y'all are making a mess of it with this project.
I've been watching the episodes as they drop on YouTube, and I am dumbfounded. Bold narrative? More like performative staging, tipping over into self-parody. Emotional depth? About as much as you'd find on the cover of the average history textbook.
It's hellish broth of machine-driven AI slop and bad human choices.
At least they're on point with the whole "experimental work flows" thing. Creative people in Hollywood and beyond are staring down the barrel of artificial intelligence systems that threaten to take away their livelihoods and devalue the skills they've worked lifetimes to perfect. Aronofsky and Primordial Soup say they're trying to find a way forward in blending human talent and agency with AI tools that have inevitability written all over them.
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