Steven Soderbergh thinks John Lennon would have liked AI

In a recent Deadline interview, Soderbergh claimed his use of the technology fits into Lennon and Ono’s interest in “creative evolution.” More candidly, he admitted that his team was running out of money and that none of them could figure out how to fill the sections where John and Yoko spoke in “abstract philosophical terms.” That the Beatles themselves figured out how to do exactly that 50 years ago seems not to have factored into Soderbergh’s thinking. 

The director further explained that Meta had agreed to help out with production, noting they wanted “to stress test” their generative video tools on a popular film. A more natural choice might have been the forthcoming Angry Birds Movie 3. Soderbergh assured that Sean Ono Lennon signed off on the decision too, apparently telling the director that his dad would have “wanted to engage.” That young Sean Lennon was five when John died, and as such was likely not having conversations about emergent technologies with his late father, is perhaps a callous thought, but it is a concern that emerged for me nonetheless. Soderbergh’s last line of defense was a classic turn of phrase in the AI defender world: that “people use CGI all the time,” but a CGI John Lennon would only appear marginally less creepy than an AI John Lennon. 

This is not the Beatles’ first foray into AI. In 2023, the band “purified” a Lennon demo to record “Now and Then.” Lennon’s demo, originally from the late 1970s, was delivered to Paul McCartney via cassette tape by Yoko Ono in 1994. 30 years later, McCartney spun the vocals into a new song. At the time, he noted, “It’s the future. We’ll just have to see where that leads.” But futurizing deceased musicians isn’t always the solution: simply look, if you dare, at the 2012 2pac hologram incident as evidence. The decision to put John Lennon through GenAI is bound to disappoint and turn off any number of Beatles fans who might have been thrilled by the possibility of seeing Lennon’s final interview, including me.