‘Heretic’ Directors Used End Credits to Warn Hollywood About AI: ‘Let’s Bury It Underground With Nuclear Warheads, Cause It Might Kill Us All’

variety.com:

William Earl administrator Scott Beck and Bryan Woods‘ newest movie, “Heretic,” out Nov. 8 via A24, is filled with thought-provoking discussions about faith and humanity.

But eagle-eyed viewers will notice something unconventional in the credits: A message stating that “No generative AI was used in the making of this film.” While “Heretic” — which tells the story of two Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) who get trapped in the house of a mysterious man (Hugh Grant) — has limited visual effects, Woods says they felt compelled to send audiences home with this discussion point. “We have no illusions that when people watch ‘Heretic’ they’re going to go, ‘Wait, did they use generative AI?'” he says. “It doesn’t feel like that at all, but it was important for us to put that out there because we think it’s something people need to start talking about.” Generative AI is artificial intelligence that can build images, video, text and many other elements from generative modeling that reacts when given a prompt.

Early developments have allowed users to change nearly anything in post-production as well as create whole videos from scratch, and it has been used in blockbusters like “Furiosa” and “Alien: Romulus.” Woods doesn’t mince words on the tech, defining generative AI as, “an algorithm jumbling a bunch of shit together and then spitting it out as art.

It’s not human and it’s borderline theft on some level. “I think this idea that an algorithm can just scrape all of human history and art off the internet, repackage it, regurgitate it, spit it out and somebody else can use that to create profit … I don’t know why that’s legal,” he continues.