- Steven Soderbergh’s new John Lennon documentary sparks controversy at Cannes over use of Meta AI-generated images
- Critics praised the Lennon interview itself, but strongly criticized the film’s surreal AI-assisted sequences
- The debate surrounding the documentary has become part of Hollywood’s larger battle over artificial intelligence in film production
Steven Soderbergh arrived at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend with a documentary built around one of the most eerie recordings in music history.
The director’s new film, “John Lennon: The Last Interview,” uses a never-before-released radio interview Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded inside the Dakota Apartments on Dec. 8, 1980, the same day Lennon was killed. By the end of the premiere, however, much of the discussion had moved entirely away from John Lennon and towards artificial intelligence.
The documentary mixes archival photographs, audio recordings and experimental images to recreate the atmosphere of the conversation. What has sparked immediate controversy is that Meta AI helped generate some of the visuals.
Soderbergh openly acknowledged that partnering with Meta on an AI-assisted film was guaranteed to piss people off. And critics at the festival took heavy aim at the film’s surreal visual sequences, which appear in moments where Lennon drifts into abstract discussions of creativity, identity and human behavior. Instead of attempting realistic recreations, the film cuts to dreamlike images, including flowers dissolving into geometric patterns, shifting pools of light, and painterly moving textures that feel closer to an experimental art installation than a traditional music documentary.
For some reviewers, these sequences were distracting enough to overshadow the emotional power of the interview itself.
AI Controversy
Just a few years ago, most conversations around artificial intelligence in filmmaking were theoretical. Now, studios, editors, visual artists and directors are actively experimenting with the technology, while audiences are growing increasingly suspicious of anything that feels synthetic.
The documentary avoids many of the uses of artificial intelligence that people fear the most. There are no deepfake voices or images of Lennon. The AI images act more as a visual aid to audio recordings.
Soderbergh has claimed that the technology simply gave him a way to create abstract images quickly and cheaply in places where conventional effects work would have been difficult or prohibitively expensive. According to the director, many filmmakers and media companies are already quietly using AI tools while pretending otherwise. In his view, the unusual part is not the use of AI itself, but admitting it publicly.
Lennon AI
The AI debate surrounding the film has grown so large that it threatens to engulf the documentary itself, which has garnered generally positive reviews beyond the AI discussion.
A respected director premiering a John Lennon documentary with Meta credited as a technology partner was always going to set off alarms in the film world. Still, the documentary feels like an experiment playing out in public, not a grand manifesto. Cannes simply turned the existing AI tensions into a very public spectacle.
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