Sean Penn pushes back on the use of AI in Hollywood

Sean Penn starkly spoke out against the use of Artificial Intelligence in the film industry while at the annual Cannes Film Festival on Friday.

Penn was at the prestigious film festival in promotion of his new film about New York City-based paramedics called ‘Black Flies’, which is directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.

Penn backs the WGA

The actor emphasized the human factor in the content creation process and agrees with the Writers Guild of America that AI should not have a place in Hollywood.

The Hollywood writers union voted almost unanimously to go on strike if their demands were not met by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The strike went into effect Monday, May 1 at midnight.

One of the demands, along with an updated pay structure to account for streaming, is to have limits imposed on the use of AI in scriptwriting.

Penn says AI is a human obscenity

When speaking at a press conference on whether or not AI will replace writers in the industry, Penn argued that the technology is a human obscenity.”

“The industry has been upending the writers and actors and directors for a very long time,” Penn said. “There’s a lot of new concepts being tossed about including the use of AI It strikes me as a human obscenity for there to be pushback on that from the producers.”

“The first thing we should do in these conversations is change the [AMPTP] and title them how they behave, which is the Bankers Guild,” the actor, writer, and director continued. “It’s difficult for so many writers and so many people industry-wide to not be able to work at this time. I guess it’s going to soul-search itself and see what side toughs it out.”