Uh Oh—There's an AI Director Now, Too

Just days after the drama stirred up by the news of a highly sought-after AI "actor", Tilly Norwood, Deadline has reported that producer Andrea Iervolino is now touting a project by an AI "director."

The Sweet Idleness is about a future (the year 2135, to be exact) in which 99% of workers have been automated, but 1% still strive to have jobs. In this case, it looks like the hard labor of a mine while everyone else relaxes in luxury.

If you'd like to check out the trailer, it's currently at this link.

The entire thing is AI-generated, so it has that motion-smoothed, boneless, uncanny valley quality with frequent aberrations (like people dancing alone waving noodle arms in the screencap above).

It's being shopped as the first film by FelliniAI. The cast is comprised of AI performers by Actor+, which is part of the Andrea Iervolino Company. The models are real people who make their likeness available (per Ciak Magazine).

Iervolino's credits include Ferrari and To the Bone, but here he's credited as "human-in-the-loop" guiding the AI.

Ciak published a statement from Iervolino (the below is translated from Italian):

FellinAI is a director who never sleeps, while Actor+ is a company of actors who live beyond the screen. It is the future, but also a return to the original poetry of cinema.

I would like to make it clear that this new productive approach—led by an Artificial Intelligence Agent as a director, with the involvement of digital actors created from real people, and applied to this project—does not intend to replace traditional cinema. It is, rather, an alternative method of creation.

Again, the timing of this announcement is right after the widespread backlash against Tilly Norwood, not to mention industry-disrupting strikes in which creatives fought against AI involvement in productions.

SAG-AFTRA has said no thank you to Tilly, releasing a statement against the AI talent.

“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers—without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience. It doesn’t solve any ‘problem’—it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.”

Let us know what you think of The Sweet Idleness.