Window Seat

One of the most controversial movies ever made, Window Seat emerged on July 21, 2023, as the world’s first AI feature film. Assembled from over 4,000 videos with every line of dialogue crafted from machine performances, the film marked a historic milestone, making history as the first fully AI-generated feature film.

At 10,000 feet, tech CEO Thom Claw’s life unravels during the flight from hell. With damaging chat logs threatening his career, he comes face-to-face with an unexpected passenger: Raiden, his high school bully. Confined to the airplane, Thom must navigate professional turmoil and confront long-buried personal traumas. As national backlash mounts and cancellation looms, the torment from his past escalates, building to an explosive final showdown—while Thom’s girlfriend Millie proves an unexpected source of anguish, twisting the knife deeper into his wounded pride.

Visionary filmmaker Hooroo Jackson returns with Window Seat, pushing the boundaries of technology and storytelling, creating a darkly comic masterpiece that blends a gritty black-and-white aesthetic with surreal, machine-generated magic realism. Jackson’s film shines through the constraints of AI, resulting in a film that is both innovative and profoundly human.

Released on July 21, 2023—the iconic “Barbenheimer” day for Oppenheimer and Barbie—Window Seat was a symbolic release countering what Jackson saw as Hollywood’s low point, marked by excessive budgets, regressive marketing, and politically driven narratives. This first AI film became a radical statement against censorship and gatekeeping, championing indie filmmaking’s spirit and challenging the industry status quo.

“My influences ranged from Monty Python to Adult Swim, low-fi animation that embraced limitations,” Jackson explains. “The silent film masters figured all this out a century ago, despite having far less to go on. In film, any concept, no matter how wild, can work. So there was no idea in Window Seat that I couldn’t cheat or pull off through visual trickery.”

The machine-generated film quickly met with backlash. “I faced a harassment campaign right away. But you can’t separate Window Seat from being the first AI movie; there’s subtext in every scene, and this isn’t an early Walt Disney experiment meant to inspire hope. It’s the kind of hard indie we saw only in the ’90s from people like Aronofsky, Mamet, or LaBute. Today, that’s possible only through AI—AI is the long-awaited solution to the tragedy of the commons.”

The film faced bans and censorship, making it a struggle to ensure its survival. Jackson anticipated this, noting, “They’ll try to claim AI films aren’t ‘real’ or deny what audiences see with their own eyes. An underground film movement must rise to surpass Hollywood, which isn’t difficult given the dwindling interest in soulless sequels and reboots that audiences and critics alike reject.”

‘Window Seat’ was made in the spirit of a revolution. But the hate didn’t stop. From privileged fat cats coming into the space 18 months after trying to steal his mantle.

To opponents of AI saying Jackson’s film don’t count as ‘real’ films, attempting something that has never been done in the history of cinema: gatekeeping the definition of cinema itself.

Jackson addressed this in his article AI Films are Films, concluding:

“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.

“[Window Seat] 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.”

On the raw machine video, Jackson noted, “None of my future films would be possible without the workflow I developed on Window Seat. It’s my most important film and it is my best film, the first full-length expression of a future that will reshape our world. By confronting raw machine video, we’re looking at the fear of an unknown reality on screen, a vision that grants the film a certain timelessness.”

Available on Blu-ray from August 31, 2024, this release includes Window Seat alongside all ten of Jackson’s controversial AI shorts, including the rare 15-minute proof of concept for The Mass, his medieval horror epic.