There may be no one in the world who hates AI more than Guillermo del Toro. The director of Pinocchio, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, among many others, loathes Generative AI so fiercely that he never misses a chance to tear it to shreds. He’s not short on reasons: besides the environmental impact, Del Toro, who considers himself a pure artist (because, well, he is) isn’t willing to be at the mercy of whatever some little machine decides.
I hate AI
Although we were promised it was going to change our lives and get all of us fired from our jobs, for the moment what Generative AI has mostly produced so far is terrible muddy posters, symbols of an imagination bordering on absolute nothingness. And Del Toro isn’t willing to get swept up in the oligarchs’ triumphalist message, especially if you’re an artist.
“AI helps you get to the middle of a good idea really fast, but there’s a dialectic with the process that’s going to take you to the top 10%. The triangulation through which I’ve arrived at some of my best ideas has only happened because I’ve spent a month or two living with them. And they’re not linear. AI is a super-fast engine that churns out semi-conscious permutations of things that already exist. Creation is things that have never existed, coming to exist”, he has said, and for good reason. Go tell Guillermo del Toro to use ChatGPT, go on.
What’s more, Del Toro has said that “Another issue is missing out on what you learn as an apprentice. You’re never a master, you’re always an apprentice. And you’re going to discover that 30% of a great image happens by accident. A drop of water hits the lens, or the camera moves. As James Cameron told me, ‘the audience believes an image is real if you put an accident in it’. It’s true. And I agree. The accident is vital. And the best accidents are things you don’t count on. It simply comes from interacting with reality”. Take note, because perhaps this is the last true craftsman in cinema, incapable of kneeling before the supposed great new future that a few billionaires have painted for us. May he keep telling his own stories for a long, very long time yet.
