The plot of Uncanny Valley centers on “a teenage girl who becomes unmoored by a hugely popular AR video game in a parallel present.” Computer scientist and visual artist Jaron Lanier has collaborated with Lyonne and Marling to create a program that blends game elements with traditional live action. Per Asteria (via The Wrap), Uncanny Valley will be “powered by ‘Marey,’ the first clean foundational AI model developed by the engineers at Moonvalley, ensuring creative integrity and copyright transparency.”
Given her old-Hollywood, woman-out-of-time demeanor, it may be surprising to hear that Natasha Lyonne has a vested interest in AI. In fact, back in 2023 she worried that AI would “completely collapse the ability for artists to get their work out there.” She told Deadline: “It’s very crushing. We just want to make stuff and we just want to make it fairly. I think we all understand that AI is potentially cheaper and a tool that we can use, but I just don’t think we want to give away our rights and free will of how to use it over to people that are just going to be in the interest of doing things faster and cheaper. … Why would we want to be in such a conflict with essentially trying to communicate the human experience? It just feels very twisted. It’s like the dark arts.”
A preoccupation with the subject seems to have led Lyonne to dabble in the dark arts herself, if only as a means to control the technology’s inevitable integration into the industry. “Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that AI is already ubiquitous,” she said in May 2024 when signing on as an advisor to AI studio Late Night Labs. “It seems to me that it’s better for us as artists to help shape this revolution than find ourselves at its mercy.” In autumn 2024, she helped co-found self-described “ethical AI film and animation studio” Asteria Studios with filmmaker Bryn Mooser. In March, she signed her name with hundreds of other creatives urging the White House to protect copyrighted work from AI (which is part of Asteria’s “ethical” mission). She’s even got a “story by” credit on an upcoming Joseph Gordon-Levitt AI thriller.
“Bringing something so bold to life feels radically expansive and exciting. I’m immensely grateful for this opportunity from Asteria and to witness this emerging era from the front lines,” Lyonne said in a statement (via The Wrap). “AI can enable bigger visions onscreen — but we must also grapple with its myriad complexities surrounding artists’ rights. As a lifelong member and armchair historian of showbiz, it feels important that we come together as a creative community to meet this technological wave with the fearless forward-thinking, grit and pioneering spirit that has always defined us.”
