Salman Rushdie has declared that artificial intelligence has no role in literature, film or storytelling of any kind, dismissing the technology as fundamentally unoriginal.
“Nothing. Zero,” Rushdie says. variety When asked what role AI should play in creative work, he answered: “AI is not useful for creative work because it has no originality. What it can do is suck up huge amounts of information and create versions of it. But what it can’t do is do things that no one has ever done before. And that’s the art of finding things that people haven’t done before. So I’m not interested in AI at all.”
The author made this comment in a wide-ranging conversation before receiving Liberatum’s 14th Cultural Honors at a ceremony in London on July 8. variety.
“The best art is more than just entertainment,” Rushdie says. “It’s a challenging thing. And you challenge people, and sometimes people don’t like it, but that’s all the more reason to do it.”
Rushdie also discussed the state of film adaptations of his novels, noting that despite renewed interest in the industry, very few of his works have been adapted into films. He cited the 2012 film Midnight’s Children, which he adapted with director Deepa Mehta, as one of the few exceptions he was satisfied with.
Rushdie said a previously announced TV adaptation of Midnight’s Children with director Vishal Bhardwaj did not go ahead.
“Oh, that failed,” Rushdie says. “I think for financial reasons and for script reasons, Netflix didn’t like the direction the script was going. That happens all the time. You have very talented filmmakers and it just doesn’t work out.”
Mr. Rushdie said there is renewed interest in a multi-episode television adaptation of “Midnight’s Children,” and separately from interest in a film adaptation of his novel “The Ground Beneath Her Feet.”
“I have a couple of books that you have to see to believe it,” Rushdie says.
Pushing aside the idea that great novels are rarely translated into great films, Rushdie cites The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Luchino Visconti’s Leopard, and Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence as adaptations he considers to be equivalent to their literary sources.
Regarding upcoming projects, Rushdie talked about the documentary “The Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie,” which is based on director Alex Gibney’s 2024 memoir “The Knife: Meditations After the Attempted Murder.” The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Rushdie said the film will premiere in the UK in early September, with a US premiere around the same time, and distribution deals in Europe and other territories.
Asked about the possibility of a biopic about himself, Rushdie said, “I didn’t become a writer to write about myself. In fact, I think I’m the least interesting subject. But I became a writer to make things up.”
Rushdie said he is also working on a new novel, but declined to divulge details as it is in the “early stages.”
