Hooroo Jackson

AI FILMS ARE FILMS

(An Essay from “The New Machine Cinema: Foundational Essays in AI Film Theory”)

Hooroo Jackson Debunks ‘The Quality Argument’ and Its Twin Brother ‘The Effort Argument’ and the Recent Attacks Against AI-Filmmakers

During the last week, there has been a coordinated attack against AI-filmmakers with a focus in particular on my milestones, “Window Seat” and more baffling, “DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict” denying their existence as legitimate films in both the general category and the animated movie category.

Opponents against AI are presenting something I will call the ‘quality argument’. Here I would like to demolish the ‘quality argument’ outright, as well as its twin brother, the ‘effort argument’ as both represent recurring attacks against, not just my films, but the entire space of AI-filmmakers and AI-pioneers.

The Quality Argument

To start with, I present Beast Wars, one of the most popular animated shows in history, with graphics so low-fi they would not pass the quality argument if they were an AI series:

My point is not to blast Beast Wars, but to legitimize its strengths, despite its low polygon count, basic textures, primitive rigging and visible constraints.

This is to underscore that the quality argument has never existed before, in any shape, in all the history of cinema; before AI. It is a low blow attempt to rewrite the rules to exclude AI filmmakers from the public record. Let me illustrate further.

First, critics said AI couldn’t make films at all.

Then they said AI couldn’t make feature-length films.

They then invented the quality argument. 

These new standards, retroactively, ensures no early AI films constitute as films according to the quality argument.

The pattern is clear: each time AI filmmakers overcome a limitation, critics find a new one.

I will state the very obvious truth that there is no definition as to what constitutes a film to begin with other than, being a film, else we must erase Beast Wars from existence as well. But let me attempt to illustrate further beyond Beast Wars. For a film to be a film, according to this very new, arbitrary and ridiculous measure built by gatekeepers and opponents to AI:

1. A film must be at perfect parity with Hollywood films in the measure of budgeted cinematography and visuals. Therefore, according to the quality argument: Clerks, Following, Primer, Begotten, Juliet Donkey-Boy, any celebrated low-fi film from French New Wave (Godard, Truffaut, and so forth) to Dogme 95 (Festen, The Idiot) “are not real films” with their natural lighting, vérité camera work and complete lack of budgets and crews. Now this is disappointing me for even have to say this as these are widely regarded as some of the greatest films ever made, but I have found myself in a position having to defend basic, established reality.

2. An animated film must match big budget animated films, akin to films made by large teams and corporate studios, else it is “not a real animated film”. According to the quality argument: Angel’s Egg, Belladonna of Sadness, La Planète Sauvage, Heroic Times, Cat City—undisputed low-fi masterpieces of animated cinema—are not animated films. Early anime–Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Tesuwan Atom. We can also discount the entirety of early animation film history: Prince Achmed, Tale of the Fox, The Snow Queen, New Gulliver, even Snow White itself—not real films.*

3. Narrative Coherence and Emotional Engagement. When visual quality arguments falter, critics often pivot to questions of narrative coherence and emotional resonance. However, this criterion would paradoxically invalidate numerous celebrated films that deliberately challenge traditional storytelling: Pi, Tetsuo: Iron Man, Peter Greenaway’s architectural meditations that prioritize space over human drama. Derek Jarman’s Blue, David Holzman’s Diary, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, the works of Straub-Huillet, none of them “real films” because they operate in the entire tradition of Brechtian detachment. Subjective as this notion of emotional engagement lies, there are many scenes in ‘Window Seat’ that draw both tears and laughter during every single screening.

4. Character models must be polished lacking in the uncanny valley. I am sorry Robert Zemeckis but your brilliant revolutionary mocap films, The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol do not constitute as real films according to the quality argument. And Beast Wars, have a seat, I had your back from the start.

5. Character consistency must be perfect. This is a specific counter against “Window Seat”–a film preceding the point where AI technology had fully solved the issue of character consistency; in “Window Seat”, each character is portrayed by two, sometimes three different models. To this I bring up the history of theater—where boys were playing girls in Shakespeare’s plays, or Japanese Kabuki theater with multiple actors playing one character; the argument invalidates not just centuries of theatrical tradition, but also films like Todd Hayne’s “I’m Not There” where six different actors played Bob Dylan.

*(a hypothetical counter) Yes but those early animated films are historic movies, they fall outside the quality argument. Animation was a blossoming technology at the time, and those were records of early technology.

(my hypothetical response) Precisely. AI is a blossoming technology too, and our AI work likewise is a record of early technology.

(their hypothetical response) But AI is not ‘real’ cinema.

Again, they circle straight back to the quality argument.

Now much of this is so logically obvious, I have been disappointed how often I must repeat this, however these are people in rather significant positions of authority and influence pushing out the quality argument in their attempts to dismiss AI films wholesale from the public record. What I think they are really saying, is that AI films are not real films until someone like Guillermo Del Toro makes an AI film. And with all due respect to those big Hollywood names, they were not the AI-pioneers.

The Effort Argument

When the quality argument falls short, as it must or else we would be forced to remove Beast Wars from the public record, you will next hear the effort argument. This is a recurring reprise against the AI space, as I said in my interview with AI-blog God of Prompt:

1. There is always this assumption that the movie came out of thin air with no effort behind it. 
2. People deny there is any filmmaker behind the film at all. 
3. They hold it under the scrutiny of a 200x microscope, every flaw and detail of the film is magnified, leaving no imperfection unnoticed. Something they would never do for any other film.
4. When criticisms are resolved with new advancements in AI, they move the goalpost immediately. 

The effort argument falls short holding a fundamental misunderstanding about what a director does on a set to begin with. Having a deep trad film background, directing the union film “Aimy in a Cage” with a Hollywood cast, and a crew of 30, it was always my point of view that the only difference between directing traditional films and directing machine films is that now, your heads of department are robots. Instead of asking your costumer for the costume, you ask your machine-costumer for machine costumes.

It is still you directing your opus at every level and every point for every decision. 

Because the sheer amount of effort that went into “DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict” is covered in my book “Artificial Imagination: The Making of DreadClub”; and my Instagram relays the extensive six month production and workflow, an undertaking that trumps most traditional and even animated films. A colleague recently spent three months on a seventeen minute AI-film. The effort argument not only falls short, it is evil to those of us who put our entire lives into our work.

The negation of new artforms and pioneers is par for the course in human history wherein establishment gatekeepers deny new movements; while these people never actually succeed in altering the historic record–often ending up villains in history–they are able to cause a significant amount of discomfort in their time.

Jazz is not real music.

Photography is not art.

Cubism is not painting.

CGI is not real animation.

Digital editing is not real editing.

Videogames are not art.

Bitcoin is not money.

AI films are not films.

It was my position from the beginning, a position that was the de facto established position to begin with, that a film is merely a film. The fact that now, for the first time in the history of cinema, we have to argue for the reality of a film that exists right in front of ones eyes, is a development in pure bad faith gatekeeping and elitist inversion.

‘Window Seat,’ the first fully AI-generated feature film, and ‘DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict,’ the first fully AI-generated animated feature film, were created when AI filmmaking was not just unproven, but came with considerable consequences to a filmmaker’s reputation and career. I faced sustained public attacks, institutional censorship from major platforms such as Twitter, Reddit, Letterboxd and TMD, and weathered resistance from powerful industry gatekeepers with audiences counting in the millions.

It was only once people realized that the history of the AI-space was actually an item of consequence, they began to attack my films mercilessly on both fronts:

1. The quality argument. The ‘real’ AI movies are the ones made by corporations, Hollywood executives, and late adopters.
2. The effort argument. AI films are not films.

From that moment, I have faced nothing but public attempts to destroy my work and reputation, with unprecedented attempts to rewrite history and disqualify my films from the historic record.

I explore all these arguments only in relation to ‘Window Seat’ as I will not even entertain the question for my other films. My purpose was to realize both a technical milestone, simultaneously with an artistic one. I further that all the unique reaction to the characters, plot and themes across all its reviews are reactions to a film in the most classic sense, not a technology.

It was not made for AI, but for independent filmmakers. Institutionalists have just faced the uncomfortable truth that for all the privileges in the world, an indie filmmaker beat them to the punch with an artistic gesture, not a commercial one.