Hooroo Jackson

The Pivot

(From “Post-Scarcity Cinema: Essays in AI Film Theory” Volume 2 of The New Machine Cinema)

The inevitable moment approaches when institutional resistance to AI filmmaking transforms into acceptance. The Pivot explores how power structures resist, then adapt, and finally rewrite history to suit their control. But why this is ultimately pointless.

The transition won’t arrive gradually – it will emerge suddenly, triggered by market disruption that makes continued opposition untenable. The signs of preparation for this pivot are already visible in institutional positioning and rhetoric. This dynamic mirrors Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital: institutions define ‘legitimate’ art not by creative merit but by their ability to monopolize the tools and credentials required to produce it. AI cinema, like all disruptive forms, threatens centuries-old gatekeeping rituals in hierarchy.

Early Indicators 

We see this preparation in subtle shifts of language and stance. I still remember when the Letterboxd CEO wrote a public facing message telling the world that we have to watch AI closely because it represents potential Terminator 2 level innovations, while in private, instructing her moderation team to permanently ban and remove all AI films from their platform. 

It is tired to say but must be said over and over again—these contradictions between public statements and private actions reveal how institutions must engage in logical fallacies and double-think to hedge their bets.

The purpose of this article to explore how these structures operate in a performative contradiction: resisting democratization while virtue signaling to the public at once, and how this misalignment leads to immediate institutional rot which must be resolved, or the institution will not survive. I will also explore the pivot, where institutions, bureaucrats and do-nothing middle men pivot from attacking us, to embracing AI cinema. I present this as an inevitable necessity, not a choice, as it is the only way to resolve the institutional rot that comes with such a fundamental misalignment with reality.

The Hydras

I remember a major critic during the twitter storm against me in 2024 pivoted immediately when an industry graphics artist called him out saying, plenty of people in film already use AI, they just don’t publicize it.

The critic quickly replied, “Well those are legitimate uses of AI.” In the moment, I was appalled. After spending hours denigrating AI filmmakers, he reversed his position instantly; I found him trapped in a position he couldn’t justify, but there it was: “legitimate” and “illegitimate.” This is how institutional power aims to maintain control? Through arbitrarily bad faith categories?

In one remark he conceded his entire ground against AI, while also opening up a detestable position in the process—it tells us exactly how AI cinema will play out.

Now these aren’t random contradictions but calculated positioning for the coming transition. He was forecasting the pivot.

The Pattern Emerges 

In late 2023 a film came out called Late Night with the Devil. It faced a  massive backlash over a single AI-generated image in the movie. In the moment, all AI filmmakers saw this with dread. Thousands upon thousands of users coordinated a massive attack against its director. 

You could not look on review sites without dozens of the top reviews hijacked with tens of thousands of likes, abusing the filmmakers with the anti-AI position. 

This seemed to be the beginning, but in retrospect it served as the full expenditure of anti-AI capital for at least a year to the point of this article–it would never be as bad as that.

Though I had weathered severe abuse and attacks to the tune of over a million and a half people hearing slander against me and my AI films, by the end of 2024, something changed. 

It felt like the Truman Show when Truman drives around the same block twice and all the traffic has mysteriously disappeared. “Would you look at that? The traffic was there. And now it’s gone!”

Robert Zemeckis’s Here (2024) used extensive AI for aging effects and came with almost no controversy. You will not see a single top review mentioning the AI. The Brutalist (2024) employs AI voice acting while receiving Academy Award nominations.

Where had all the traffic gone?

Now unthinking hoards tend to protect power innately. They are afraid of it. More they want it. They suckle up—as the aforementioned critic, there is an interior map, a position we can read that exposes the why and the how. The pattern is clear, their attacks are aimed against independent filmmakers, not studio productions. Of course. They don’t require us to climb the ladder of their industry, but they certainly require those studio pictures that utilized AI. Showing essentially, the criticism is a paper tiger, but actually, is quite dangerous.

Elitist is one of those words that is a vicious insult if you dish it out, but those who receive it often take it as a compliment: So he’s admitting we’re elite, I always knew so.

Understand, nothing fundamental changed between these releases except institutional exhaustion and creeping normalization. From this alone we can extrapolate that extensive AI use in films will not even be an item that is mentioned in the future. It has pivoted from tens of thousands of complaints to no complaints in the course of one single year.

I am sure there will be more dying gasps along these lines of the masses thrashing against safe targets—independent filmmakers can take it. We already work on faith alone, and how funny that faith is what is punished most violently by our sick and twisted world.

But by now they’ve made it clear, they won’t touch Hollywood AI. Now we breach the pivot.

When the Pivot Happens

Institutions are already developing sophisticated mechanisms to maintain power during the transition. Their strategy appears multi-layered and carefully orchestrated to preserve existing hierarchies while appearing to embrace innovation. We’ll likely see the pivot manifest through:

  • Separate AI categories at major festivals, creating artificial divisions
  • New credentialing systems to determine “legitimate” AI use conveniently shutting out independent filmmakers and AI pioneers.
  • Emphasis on traditional industry paths and connections.
  • Maintenance of high budget barriers through “quality” requirements, while ignoring such requirements for their golden horses. 
  • Privileging of hybrid/mocap approaches over pure generation.

Further through the technology of AI itself, the proprietary AI tools accessible only to studios trained on their own libraries will be the ‘true’ AI. Generative based on consumer tools represents the unwashed. AI must be an augmentation of tradfilm only, that is the ‘true’ AI. The solo-created AI film? That is automated, from the filthy independent.

None of this is theoretical—the opponents tell us this directly.

When Hollywood uses AI, that’s legitimate. When independent filmmakers use AI, they’re grifters.

The development of institutional standards will favor existing players. As Robert Zemeckis got a pass with Here. As Brady Corbett got a pass with the Brutalist.

I remember the 90s indie boom, and can safely say: there will still be lottery winners who come up in AI through indies.

But where is the capital in winning the lottery, I ask? Remember Shane Carruth? Remember Richard Kelly?

What are these industry elitists guarding with such a tight grip? Technical specifications are being developed not to ensure quality but to exclude independent creators. “Responsible AI” narratives emerge not from ethical concerns but from the need to maintain artificial scarcity in a post-scarcity environment. The institutional grip tightens precisely because what they’re gripping—sand. Remember, the pivot will go to great lengths to exclude us, it is really quite desperate; as I already outlined in AI Films are Films, and Snake in the Grass, this is already happening:

  • Requirements for specific high-end hardware or proprietary tools
  • Artificial standards for “professional” AI implementation
  • Complex technical requirements that only studios can meet
  • Focus on hybrid approaches requiring traditional infrastructure
  • Emphasis on expensive mocap and technical setups
  • Institutional blacklisting of pure AI creators
  • Coordinated platform bans and content removal
  • Systematic erasure from databases and archives
  • Denial of festival/exhibition opportunities
  • Creation of social costs for pure AI adoption
  • Studio use praised as innovative, indie innovations ignored.
  • Independent use condemned as threatening
  • Hybrid approaches positioned as legitimate
  • Pure generation branded as dangerous
  • Cost barriers framed as quality control
  • Denial of critical coverage and reviews
  • Blocking from distribution channels
  • Removal from professional organizations
  • Systematic delegitimization of work
  • Coordinated critical blasting of independent AI films
  • Organized reputation destruction
  • Collective gaslight campaign: “not real films”
  • Focus on technical limitations over content
  • Denial of artistic legitimacy while embracing the legitimacy of ‘proper’ AI.

The proper AI: 

  • High budgets equated with responsibility
  • Institutional approval as legitimacy marker
  • Traditional paths positioned as ethical
  • Festival/award category charlatanism
  • Cost barriers justified as safeguards
  • Creation of artificial professional hierarchies
  • Credential requirements
  • Industry connection prerequisites

The Trigger Point

The pivot will coincide with clear market disruption, then the sparks begin to fly. I speak about the moment someone directs an AI film for a negligible cost and earns a million dollars with an AI film. The AI filmmaking revolution will begin. And not one second sooner. 

This moment will transform theoretical possibility into undeniable reality. The arms race that follows will make continued resistance pointless. The industry will thrash around and realize it can’t compete. Then it will sick its dogs on us. 

Once independent creators can achieve studio-quality production at minimal cost while finding audience success, the existing power structures lose their primary leverage – control over production and distribution resources. All those methods I listed above, will be out in full force—but the rub, they can no longer touch us. 

We won’t need their approval. That is because their pivot aims to find a middle ground in the face of certain defeat.

Institutional Memory-Holing

When the pivot occurs, expect a coordinated effort to rewrite history:

  • Previous opposition will be denied or minimized
  • Early pioneers will be marginalized and erased
  • Documentation of resistance will be buried
  • Late adopters and Hollywood voices will be positioned as visionaries
  • Early AI pioneers will be relegated as “primitive experiments”
  • Institutional adoption will be framed as legitimizing the form
  • Hybrid methods positioned as “mature” development
  • Critical resistance reframed as “thoughtful caution”

But something beautiful will happen all the same. I point to this in my article One Man, One Film; when a hybrid AI picture in 2024 attempted to paint its $8,000 per minute workflow as the revolutionary milestone in cinema, while DreadClub: Vampire’s Verdict was made for $400, besting their million dollar budget in both critical appraisal and distribution. 

In retrospect it represented a fork in the road with the exact dynamic that is coming. 

The gatekeepers will make their $50 million dollar hybrid picture with AI components. The independent will make their generative AI picture made for fifty dollars. And guess what. The generative AI picture will still be the better movie. In all scenarios, the establishment loses.

The Fundamental Contradiction

This resistance faces an insurmountable problem – institutions built on artificial scarcity cannot survive democratization of creative tools in a post-scarcity setting. 

No amount of gatekeeping can prevent the implications of studio-quality production becoming available to individual creators at negligible cost. That is because AI was built to bypass them in the first place.

It’s self-reinforcing – the more institutions try to deny the AI revolution, the more they prove the necessity for democratization. 

AI doesn’t need institutional validation because the core achievement is proving institutional validation is now unnecessary. It is fundamentally built into reality that gatekeeping and exclusion will lose to democratization and inclusion, in a post-scarcity environment.

The Transformation

The institutions describes in this article are not just gatekeepers but living systems designed to perpetuate themselves. When exposing their hypocrisy—publicly condemning AI while privately adopting it, gaslighting pioneers while benefiting from their innovations—we are confronting a machine that has survived centuries by absorbing dissent, by making outsiders feel powerless.

It is not a fair fight. It’s David vs. Goliath, but Goliath has rewritten the rules of the battlefield.
The hypocrisy reveals a maddening truth: power doesn’t argue in good faith. When institutions weaponize morality (“responsible AI”) while acting amorally, we realize, the dissonance is intentional—it’s how power maintains control.

If there is a silver lining, it is this. The democratizing potential of AI filmmaking means traditional validation structures may become obsolete before they can complete the pivot. Until then, it is clear institutions will shift to hedge their bets from virtue signaling opposition to embracing AI in a controlled, gatekept form.

Much of how cinema has operated in recent years is through coercion, we audiences and filmmakers are held at gunpoint through the weaponization of attention; at both input and output level, we must oblige from the unnatural directives sprang from a fundamental misalignment with reality, or face actual consequences. Institutional rot trickles all the way down to the individual.

This transformation differs fundamentally from previous technological transitions like digital editing or cinematography. Those changes could be absorbed into existing power structures. AI represents the full face of a new power structure, the collective resonance.

The institutional pivot thus represents not just adaptation but a desperate attempt at survival. It is why their immediate response was censorship, the most reprehensible intellectual crime. The AI revolution must respond in turn: it must censor back their relevance. It must create its own rules, its own artists, its own directive. Institutions who were stewards of the old way, should have no say in the AI revolution. They have already let us down out the gate, for they have failed the only test that matters, the moral test. In your life, did you function as an art censor? Did you block artists? Did you delete art?

Because the future belongs not to petty authority and their rotting institutions but to creators, artists and filmmakers, building new forms of art unconstrained by the old models of artificial scarcity. The future does not belong to censors but the art they tried to kill.

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