AI art generators can't give you 'soul', Oscar-nominated Guillermo del Toro says
Guillermo del Toro tells ITV News Entertainment Reporter Rishi Davda of his concerns over AI art
While award-winning Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro may soon be adding to his Oscar collection, it is the prospect of AI art creation that has him worried.
His new film Pinocchio, a dark fantasy retelling of the children's classic set in fascist Italy during World War II, has just been nominated in the best animated feature film category.
Premiering in select theatres last year before being available to stream on Netflix, the stop-motion film has been met with critical acclaim for its animation, visuals, music, story, and voice-acting.
Artificial intelligence systems have started to take inspiration from famous artists, training themselves on a vast collection of digitised artworks to produce new images you can conjure in seconds from a smartphone app.
While Van Gogh and other long-dead master painters aren’t complaining, some living artists and photographers are starting to fight back against the AI software companies creating images derived from their works.
And as AI becomes a more active part of everyday life, when will the step from mimicry to full-blown creation be taken? Will there be a point when scripts and film direction are all led by a computer?
Del Toro says he hopes he "won't live to see that".
He told ITV News: "It can’t draw, it may be able to mix information and this and that. But if you put a human face in front of a machine, the machine cannot draw.
"It cannot give you the soul, it cannot give you the very act of creation, so I think right now some people may use it for illustration, I think that in my opinion there is no substitution for the act of expressing an emotion, that’s what art is.
"Art is not there to illustrate, art is not there to decorate, art is there is there to express pain and [the] need to have a voice, so for me it's almost an affront in the face of the universe."
As the award season gets underway, del Toro says he is "very happy" to have been nominated for another Oscar.
He said: "We were very happy, behind Mark and myself we carry hundreds of people and showcase in this manner.
"What the season allows is for more eyes to look at what you created, for more people to experience it and more people to take it into their lives and that’s what everybody working on this wanted."
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