- Steven Soderbergh’s new documentary about John Lennon sparked controversy at Cannes for its use of images generated by Meta AI
- Critics praised the Lennon interview, but heavily criticized the film’s surreal AI-assisted sequences.
- The debate around the documentary has become part of Hollywood’s broader fight over artificial intelligence in film.
Steven Soderbergh arrived at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend with a documentary built around one of the most disturbing recordings in music history.
The director’s new film, “John Lennon: The Last Interview,” uses a never-before-released radio interview that Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded inside the Dakota Apartments on Dec. 8, 1980, the same day Lennon was murdered. However, by the end of its release, much of the discussion had shifted away from John Lennon entirely and focused on artificial intelligence.
The documentary mixes archival photographs, audio recordings and experimental visual elements to recreate the atmosphere of the conversation. What caused immediate controversy is that Meta AI helped generate some of the images.
Soderbergh openly acknowledged that teaming up with Meta on an AI-assisted film would surely irritate people. And festival critics focused heavily on the film’s surreal visual sequences, which appear during moments in which Lennon delves into abstract discussions about creativity, identity and human behavior. Rather than attempting realistic recreations, the film turns to dreamlike imagery, including flowers that dissolve into geometric patterns, shifting pools of light, and moving painterly textures that feel more like an experimental art installation than a traditional music documentary.
For some critics, those sequences were distracting enough to overshadow the emotional power of the interview itself.
AI controversy
Just a few years ago, most conversations about AI in film were theoretical. Now studios, editors, visual effects artists and directors are actively experimenting with the technology as the public becomes increasingly suspicious of anything that looks synthetic.
The documentary avoids many of the uses of AI that people fear most. There are no voices or deepfake images of Lennon. AI images work more as a visual aid for audio recordings.
Soderbergh has argued that the technology simply gave him a way to create abstract images quickly and cheaply in places where conventional effects would have been difficult or prohibitively expensive. According to the director, many filmmakers and media companies are already silently using artificial intelligence tools while pretending otherwise. In his opinion, what is unusual is not the use of AI itself, but admitting it publicly.
Lennon AI
The AI debate surrounding the film has grown so large that it threatens to swallow up the documentary itself, which has generally garnered positive reviews beyond the AI discussion.
A respected director releasing a John Lennon documentary with Meta credited as a technology partner was always going to set off alarm bells within the film world. Still, the documentary feels like an experiment playing out in public, not a grand manifesto. Cannes simply turned existing tensions over AI into a very public spectacle.
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