Back in 2023, in the early days of AI video, an enthusiast created an ad for the technology that featured a John Lennon caricature saying things like “Give the prompt a chance” and “All you need is the prompt.” Naturally, it was barbaric.
Just three years ago, Steven Soderbergh, director of the Oceans trilogy, Traffic, and Erin Brockovich, used AI video in his upcoming documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview. He says AI-generated scenes will make up 10 percent of the movie, and he thinks the late Beatle would approve.
This documentary films John Lennon’s last detailed radio interview with Yoko Ono on December 8, 1980, hours before he was shot and killed in New York.
Although much of the audio is accompanied by archival photos and videos, visuals for some of the interviews that deal with more abstract and philosophical concepts proved difficult to find, leaving a hole in the film that needed to be filled.
The director told Deadline that Meta happened to be looking for filmmakers to “stress test” some of its AI video tools. He agreed to provide the technology for free to help him complete the film.
Just this past weekend, the Academy Awards updated their Oscar rules to make it clear that AI will not be considered for acting or original screenplay. John Lennon: The Last Interview could be an interesting test of how well the public accepts the heavy use of AI visuals for other uses in a genre that seems out of place.
In the interview, Stephen acknowledged that AI is a “highly emotive subject,” but insisted he was not using it to replace human effort.
This is debatable, as a human animator or VFX artist could potentially create something suitable for a movie given enough time and resources. Back in December, a music video for a song by former Beatle George Harrison received critical acclaim for its hand-crafted stop-motion animation directed by Finn Wolfhard of “Stranger Things” fame.
The issue with the John Lennon documentary appears to be a lack of funding, which Stephen admits was a factor in relying on AI. At least he won’t use AI to recreate John Lennon’s likeness. Instead, the images include iconic visuals, cavemen and crying babies in 60s costumes.
“There are ways to use AI for the purpose of deceiving or manipulating someone or creating an image that you want to make them think it’s real. And there are also uses where that’s what we’re doing in the documentary, where it’s clear that it’s AI and it’s being used in a way that basically uses VFX or CGI or any kind of non-photographic technology,” the director argues.
He says John’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, told him that the late Beatle “would have loved to have something to do with” AI. “He loved all new technology, and all the Beatles,” the filmmaker said. “He’ll want to see what he can do with it.”
After all, did Lennon really want to “give Prompto a chance”?
