Ava DuVernay invites you to make up your own mind about AI in her new doc

DuVernay’s 14th focuses on how 14th Amendment tenets of birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection under the law, and the prohibition for heads of state to engage in acts of insurrection or rebellion shaped the U.S., and how they’ve been challenged in recent years. Earlier this month, at the documentary’s premiere at the New York Film Festival ahead of its December 4 Netflix release, DuVernay said post-production tools gave the photos a 3D quality similar to the stereoscope, a device used to view images side-by-side. She defended such tools during her THR interview, saying, “I think we’ve come to a place in filmmaking where we have to be really sober about the ways in which that technology is [used] across so much of the workflow.” DuVernay is hardly the only person to integrate AI into filmmaking. Danny Boyle similarly used AI to animate old photos in Ink and Ben Affleck praised the “ethical” use of AI in his movie Animals. And earlier this year, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors during the Q2 earnings call that the company used generative AI in 300 projects. But given Netflix’s recent issues, we’d say there’s still a strong case for making movies with good old-fashioned human artistry.