AI cannot make cinema, says director Linklater

Can great art be made without human genius and all its flaws? It's a vital question at a time when artificial intelligence threatens to subsume Hollywood.
Through new movies 'Nouvelle Vague' and 'Blue Moon', director Richard Linklater offers an answer — delving into the lives of two brilliant, volatile men whose films and plays shaped French New Wave cinema and Broadway.
His conclusion?
'AI is not going to make a film,' the US indie auteur tells.
'Storytelling, narrative, characters? Something that connects to humanity? That's a whole 'nother thing', says the Texan whose notable films include 'Boyhood', the 'Before' trilogy, 'School of Rock' and 'Hit Man'.
Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague', streaming on Netflix from November 14, charts how young French director Jean-Luc Godard defied all filmmaking convention to create his 1960 classic 'Breathless'.
It captures the swagger, charisma and impulsiveness with which Godard convinced financial backers and Hollywood starlet Jean Seberg to make a debut feature that had neither a script nor a workable filming schedule.
'He's a little full of nonsense, but he's a genius. A revolution is going on, but he's the only one who knows it', Linklater says of Godard, an icon of cinema's French New Wave movement in the late 1950s and 60s.
By contrast 'Blue Moon', in cinemas now, depicts Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart at the end of his career.
With composer Richard Rodgers, Hart wrote classic songs like 'The Lady is a Tramp', 'My Funny Valentine' and, of course, 'Blue Moon'.
But the film captures a single evening, in which it becomes clear Rodgers has moved on to even greater success with new partner Oscar Hammerstein II, with the debut of their hit musical 'Oklahoma!'
Within months, Hart will be dead from excessive drinking.
'It's become very clear that the times are leaving him behind. They're leaving behind his genius', says Linklater.
'No algorithm is gonna do that' Which brings us back to the question of human genius and art.
For Linklater, AI is 'just one more tool' that artists can use, but it 'doesn't have intuitions or consciousness'.
'I think it's going to be less revolutionary than everybody thinks in the next few years,' he said in an interview ahead of the Los Angeles premiere of 'Nouvelle Vague' at The American French Film Festival (TAFFF).
The French New Wave's trademark documentary-style realism was made possible in part by technology — the arrival of cheap, light, portable cameras.
But Linklater rejects the claim that the cost savings and flexibility offered by AI could unleash another filmmaking revolution. — AFP