A toilet is bubbling over with sticky yellow goo. Stunned executives are treated to a speech from a cartoon ghost. Someone’s dog walks over a wall before reconfiguring its own body parts. Alan Warburton has captured some truly stunning footage for his new documentary The Wizard of AI. But what’s most impressive – or perhaps most alarming – is the fact that he didn’t actually create one at all.
“I would say 99% of it was created using generative artificial intelligence tools,” says the 43-year-old artist-filmmaker. Could his twenty-minute film really be, as he claims, the world’s very first AI documentary?
The film’s cleverest passage tells the story of “the death of the artist” in the style of a noir graphic novel
“I’m taking a leaf out of the AI hype playbook there,” he admits with a laugh. “In reality, there will never be a first truly AI-generated documentary, because there will always be some form of labor involved. It is the work that makes it watchable.”
The Wizard of AI is more than watchable. While attempting to unravel both the hype and terror that has arisen around AI, the documentary gleefully unfolds a barrage of riotous imagery, from mutated, muscular fish to disappearing ghosts via the key assets of nuclear warheads. It’s visually stunning and rattles along at a rollercoaster pace. But behind all that beauty lies a subversive message: Warburton uses AI to warn us about the damage done to artists and creatives by… AI itself.
“There are so many different new tools coming to market right now and we hear from CEOs and technology evangelists about how revolutionary they are, but we don’t really hear from the people on the other side whose jobs are being affected,” says Warburton. “I wanted to try to balance some of that AI hype with a little artist advocacy.”
The cleverest passage of the documentary is one that tells the story of “the death of the artist” in the style of a noir graphic novel – with the AI program Midjourney playing the role of mafia boss/hitman. “It turns out the artist was walking around a little too much and sharing everything – and that’s how they finally got him,” the narrator says in full Noo-Yoik accent as we see a graphic designer sprawled on the floor, surrounded by pens , ink and crime tape.
The film, commissioned by the Open Data Institute, may have been made with AI, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t require a lot of skill. “People have this idea that you can put your thoughts straight into a feature film,” says Warburton. “In reality it is a lot more complicated. You never get what you want. You get pushback from the platform. For example, when I try to get an image of the Chinese president, I can’t because they have blocked it. So you have to find all these solutions to get what you need.
Warburton continually encountered ethical problems. Ask for a scene in the style of a particular artist, or even a loose genre, and you’ll inevitably rip off other artists whose lifelong training has been sucked into the AI generator. Warburton tried to avoid this as best he could – for example, in the graphic novel section he entered his own drawings and asked the machine to build things around them.
However, this leads to another problem: he now fed the AI machine with the content it needs to keep improving. “We are going to shape it ourselves. We become complicit in it. When you use it, you pump it. When you loosen up, you let other people pump it. There is no winning strategy with AI.”
Warburton’s work over the years has included animation, filmmaking and sculpture. Since 2016, he has been producing a series of increasingly ambitious critical video essays on the impact of technology on visual culture, which have been viewed more than a million times with his intelligent musings on CGI and special effects.
I think AI images are a lot better than AI-generated text – although that’s all about to change, I’m afraid to warn you
Although this latest version is built from over 100GB of AI-generated content, Warburton acknowledges that this was not the case whole generated by AI. It contains a short clip of Kanye West, and an interview with, for example, the tech and arts writer Joanne McNeil. Furthermore, the script had no input from programs like ChatGPT – that was all written by Warburton himself, based on research he carried out for his ongoing PhD in digital culture and communications at the Vasari Center at Birkbeck in London. “The script is the human anchor in the whole,” he says. “Plus, I think AI images are a lot better than AI-generated text – although that’s all about to change, I’m afraid to warn you.”
In total, The Wizard of AI took Warburton three weeks to make. He says if he had tried to make it two years ago, it probably would have taken a team of ten people three months to make it. “And it would have cost about £50,000. Although that is an unfair comparison, because no one would actually pay for a critical video essay about art and technology.”
This brings up another interesting ethical element about AI: does it really take away someone’s job when the piece would never have been commissioned in the first place? Warburton points out that there have always been debates about new technologies entering the art world, from the invention of the camera to the rise of graphic design tools such as Adobe. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have to worry about these latest developments: “I don’t think we’ve seen this kind of banger on this scale before,” he says. “I think this is a very different kind of historical event.”
As an AI critic, did he feel a little dirty using it? “Yes, but what softens that feeling of filth is the fact that I was trying to raise awareness for artists’ rights. I think I’m probably on the right side. And if someone has already stolen my art and turned it into a tool, then it is certainly my right to use that tool and think about it, before other people who have not invested in the art, who have not worked in it . for 15 years, who suddenly jump on board using these tools and rip off other artists directly.
And what about the fact that because his movie looks so good, he’s inadvertently advocating for AI tools? “Well, yes,” he laughs. “In my attempts to make a beautiful movie, I accidentally undermined my entire argument. That could be up for debate!”
But Warburton – who uses a variety of digital technologies to make his films – has never been strictly anti-AI. In an alternate universe, where artists are well rewarded for their work, he would undoubtedly be evangelizing about it along with the tech bros. Instead, he’s part of a cultural moment in which artists are feeling a certain uncertainty about whether or not they should embrace or reject these potentially career-ending tools. The same goes for cultural organizations that Warburton predicts will feel uncomfortable sharing his video. ‘I wonder if there is a double bind. Can they promote this crucial AI approach as they are already exploring how to reduce costs using AI in their own organizations? No one likes to look like a hypocrite.”
Perhaps these numerous ethical struggles are why the film ends without the expected devastating conclusion it seems to be building towards. Instead, Warburton wraps things up by saying that “everything will probably be fine, artists will find a way.” Isn’t that a bit…
“It’s an escape, right?” Warburton is leading the way. He has already had someone else discuss this. He understands it, but says that line came from his own experience as an artist dealing with the challenges of recent years.
“We’ve had waves of disruption from things like NFTs, and it can feel like the whole game changes overnight,” he says. “I could have easily put down my tools as an artist these past two years, and I almost did. But what I started to realize was that you can’t steal the spirit of art. It can always go somewhere else. As fast as new technology moves, I think artists can move faster.”