San Francisco Frontiers - Director Maggie Gyllenhaal ditched AI for Marilyn Monroe film

The "Dark Knight" star is head of the jury at this year's Venice Film Festival but she is also premiering a new short film -- "Flesh Impact" -- which imagines 1950s screen icon Marilyn Monroe as if she had lived to 100 years old.

Gyllenhaal told an audience in Venice how artificial intelligence technology -- one of the top topics at the festival -- is being pushed aggressively at directors as a cost-saving measure and as an alternative to acting.

"The people who commissioned this project from me asked me to use AI," Gyllenhaal told The Future of Creativity event.

"They were... training it off of Marilyn Monroe films that we had licensed. And I went for it," said the director.

"I was like, 'All right, I'm curious. I don't know. Let's see'."

The technology was meant to transform "Fifty Shades of Grey" actress Dakota Johnson into the elderly version of Monroe.

"It fundamentally did not work," Gyllenhaal said.

"We worked hard at it, and in the end, I threw it away because what was coming through Dakota playing Marilyn Monroe was so much more moving, human, alive."

- 'Dont buy the hype' -

Gyllenhaal's testimony underlines the current limitations of AI video technology, which has sparked fears about job losses throughout the film and TV industries -- as well as the mass theft of intellectual property by software companies.

Speaking at the same event, the head of open-source messaging application Signal, Meredith Whittaker, warned about AI being controlled by a handful of billionaires, but urged the audience "don't buy the hype".

Hollywood icon George Clooney sounded downbeat about the implications, however.

"A lot of people are going to get replaced, not just actors: crew members, visual effects supervisors," the 65-year-old, who picked up a lifetime achievement award in Venice on Wednesday, told the audience.

Gyllenhaal, from a well-connected Hollywood family that includes actor brother Jake, also stressed how AI companies were seeking to license the images of actors in order to reproduce them in digital form.

"Someone who I respect a lot theoretically asked me to consider the idea of asking actors who trust me -- because I have a lot of actors who trust me that I love -- and they should trust me to give me their likeness and to make a film with them," she said.

"I thought it's a completely and absolutely different paradigm than how I think, how I work," she added.

- Mixed feelings -

The advent of new AI video-generation technology is again a major topic of conversation at Venice as change sweeps through the industry.

In an AFP interview earlier this week, Venice festival supremo Alberto Barbera acknowledged the dangers but he sounded more optimistic than other leading movie figures.

The technology enables artists and directors "to achieve things that until now were not possible," he explained.

The festival has programmed a documentary made entirely with AI -- "Be Brave" from Italian director Francesco Carrozzini, which centres on the founder of jeans brand Diesel, Renzo Rosso.

"Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson, a special effects specialist, said in May at the Cannes Film Festival that he thought AI was "going to destroy the world".

When it came to film however, "I don't dislike it at all," he added.

E.Jones--SFF