11 of the Best A.I.-Created Movies Ever Made
by Megan Botti
A.I.-Created Movies are Getting Better — Here are the 10 Best So Far
Tools like Runway and Pika are pushing the cutting edge of A.I.’s use in video production. In less than a year, A.I.-generated video went from being a far-off aspiration to a legitimate tool that inspired actors to push for stronger contract protections.
A.I. is making advances in text-to-video generation, but some of the best examples of A.I. in video and film right now are in visual FX and cinematography.
Here are, in no particular order, some of the best examples of film and video produced with artificial intelligence.
OUR T2 REMAKE
This is a collaboration between 50 experienced and amateur filmmakers, where each collaborator was assigned a single scene and tasked with reimagining the audio-visual elements of the original Terminator 2 with the help of GenAI. The completed scenes are as diverse as the creators, featuring various animation styles and storytelling devices with one of the few stipulations that every scene honors the original movie plot. Check out Creativity Squared’s conversation with three of the project’s principal collaborators.
Critterz
Produced in collaboration with OpenAI, Critterz was the first animated short film to exclusively feature visuals produced by GenAI tool Dall-E. In this case, the creators used Dall-E to create the characters and scenery before passing the designs on to an Emmy award-winning team of animators to bring to life. Glimpse behind the scenes of the creation process here and check out Creativity Squared’s conversation with the film’s creator, Chad Nelson.
Planet Zebulon Five
Another entry in the fantasy nature documentary subgenre, this film from the A.I. video community, Curious Refuge, showcases how advancements in A.I. video are being made incrementally. Similar to Critterz, all of the creatures on Zebulon Five were generated by artificial intelligence. Unlike Critterz, though, A.I. also generated the short animations in each shot. Each shot is still only a few seconds long, but the trajectory of A.I. video implies that we’re not far off from being able to generate full scenes.
Thank You for Not Answering
From the A.I. video pioneer Paul Trillo, Thank You For Not Answering is a flagship example of a big trend in A.I. video where short animated clips are strung together to visually depict the artist’s interpretation of an accompanying audio track. In this case, the audio depicts a man leaving a voicemail for somebody from his past, while the clips each depict an imagined moment of a life that could have been. Trillo used only text and image prompts to produce the video clips using Runway. He told the New Yorker that he sees A.I. as an assistant that can help bring ideas to execution faster than ever.
Absolve by Jacques
Paul Trillo’s A.I. video portfolio also includes more visually stunning applications of A.I. in VFX. The music video he made for French electronic musician, Jacques, employs a combination of traditional VFX with A.I. to turn the Louvre museum into a pool of melted artwork and a puddle of tears into a disembodied head.
HYSTERESIS
Robert Seidel’s multi-award-winning work challenges the culture of predictability promised by artificial intelligence by using the technology to remix classical Western imagery into a completely unpredictable fever dream that overlaps, collides, and morphs into modern art. The film’s description says that it “celebrates the disruption of pattern recognition and the artistic corruption of results induced by artificial intelligence.”
Sigma_001
This sci-fi miniseries deploys A.I. in a more holistic way than other works in the space. A.I. is neither the visual centerpiece nor the driver of the creative process for Sigma_001. Filmmaker Quinn Halleck (who previously worked under Director Michael Bay), uses A.I. as a tool across all aspects of the production process. The series depicts a journalist investigating rumors of a sentient artificial intelligence.
CHECKPOINT – Creativity in the Age of AI
Vox veteran Joss Fong and Hungarian filmmaker Aron Filkey collaborated on this short film exploring the history of human creativity in the context of innovative technology. The duo used ChatGPT to write the narration script, an A.I. voice to narrate, and A.I.-generated imagery throughout the film. CHECKPOINT won Gold at this year’s AI Film Festival sponsored by Runway.
Generation
The Grand Prix winner at this year’s AI Film Festival, Generation is a fast-paced short film telling the story of human evolution through narration, choreography and stunning visual effects. Director Riccardo Fusetti used A.I. to generate and animate the vivid effects throughout the film.
The Frost
Produced by AdTech startup, Waymark, The Frost possibly the best example we have of an entirely A.I.-generated film. At 12 minute runtime, the short film is also one of the longest examples we have. That’s significant because, currently, the major drawback of generating video with A.I. is the challenge of maintaining a consistent style throughout each scene. The Frost also differs from other works in the space because it was made as commercial project to showcase the capabilities of Waymark’s video ad production platform, rather than as a passion project by an individual or small collaborative group. The Frost also demonstrates the shortcomings of A.I. video generation. For instance, the characters in the film look almost photorealistic, until the character starts to speak, revealing that A.I. cannot mimic natural human mouth movements. These flaws offer a roadmap for future advancements in A.I. video.
/Imagine
Produced singlehandedly by French artist Anna Apter, this short film about the digital world awaiting newly minted 13-year-olds bears resemblance to Thank You For Not Calling. A sequence of generated images show young teens with concerned expressions, while a narrator’s voice prompts an A.I. model to imagine what the children will encounter now that they’re of legal age to open a social media account. This film was featured at a recent AI film showcase sponsored by Sony and Adobe.
A.I. Video on the Rise
Although A.I.-generated video is still coming along, A.I. is already cementing its place in the toolbox of traditional filmmakers. As a collaborative tool, A.I. is helping smaller filmmakers punch above their weight by shortening the production timeline and making more possible with a limited budget.
Text-to-video may not be capable enough to produce video like we’re used to watching on television and movie screens, gradual improvements are coming every day. And in the meantime, films like The Frost show how the constraints of A.I. are actually helping to carve out its own niche of content where creators lean into the quirks of generated images rather than try to refine them into what we’ve seen before.
And as the industry grows, videos like Sigma_001 foreshadow how A.I. can serve a more understated role in the production process. Rather than being the “what” of a piece of content as we’ve seen recently, A.I. will become the “how,” similar to all the video production tools the general public has never heard of.
Together, these videos show how A.I. is expanding access for individual filmmakers to make high-quality productions. If the trend continues, the democratization of filmmaking will radically change the landscape of digital content. Hollywood and streaming services should buckle up!