When it comes to Hollywood’s AI future, few have been more vocal — or critical — than Justine Bateman.
Armed with a computer science degree from UCLA, the veteran actor-filmmaker has sounded an alarm about the dangers of replacing human work with machine fabrication. She became a lead voice during the strikes when she advised SAG-AFTRA on the issue and was a public face of the AI-skeptic movement on the WGA picket line.
Bateman is the founder of Credo 23, a two-year-old organization that believes Generative AI “will destroy the structure of the film business” and has set as its goal “making very human, very raw, very real films/series that respect the process of filmmaking.”
As Hollywood begins to cautiously dance with text-to-video tools like OpenAI‘s Sora and as the company makes Miyazaki-esque images available (to no small furor), Bateman is renewing her call. The Family Ties star and Violet director argues a movement is growing — that it needs to grow — to combat a drift to the synthetic using organic material human both in creation and sensibility.
She calls this movement a drive toward “the new” — a push to restore a humanity to filmmaking that she says has been lost since the algorithms began dictating content choices last decade and that will be further torched by AI.
Her mission is a kind of populism we’re likely to soon see across a host of industries (she is close with Sean O’Brien, leader of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters). Several high-profile creators have joined her push, including Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner and noted cinematographer and The Handmaid’s Tale director Reed Morano.
To platform the movement, Bateman has founded the Credo 23 Film Festival — a “filmmaker-first, no-AI event” in which movies can contain nothing machine-generated (visual effects are OK, as they’re driven by humans). She says she will give all profits from the festival to the filmmakers to support them and fund their next film.
Credo 23 is taking place this weekend at Hollywood American Legion Post 43 just south of the Hollywood Bowl, showcasing about 30 shorts and features. They range from pieces like Ethan Krahn’s avant garde Meditation on a Room to Callie Carpinteri’s teen-drama Tribeca hit Dirty Towel, as well as two Bateman-helmed features, Look and Feel, the latter starring David Duchovny and Rae Dawn Chong. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Bateman before the festival.
You’ve decided a film festival is a good way to get your message out. What do you hope it accomplishes?
The two goals of the festival are first, no AI, and second, all proceeds go to the filmmaker so they can make their next human film. What happened was this. I saw the studios were all in on AI and the streamers were all in on AI. But then the festivals went all in on AI and I thought, “Wait a minute. The film festivals are where we saw Pulp Fiction, and Sorry to Bother You and sex, lies and videotape and all this really original work. And now, how does that happen if festivals are all in on automated content?” So I thought, “I’ll start my own festival.”
Is there something broken about the festival model generally, do you think? Or are you just worried about a tech takeover?
I have a lot of gratitude for film festivals. There are so many people who spend an incredible amount of time and who work really hard to showcase great filmmakers. At the heart of all these film festivals, there’s a true objective to champion great art. But what have I seen happen — and perhaps it’s a result of money constraints, I really don’t know their business — is that they always had three categories of focus. Premieres of big films, cause-based films, and kickass innovative art like a Pulp Fiction or a sex, lies and videotape or a Cronenberg Crash. But the first two of these categories have gotten incredibly large while the third has gotten really small. Films that were different and really hit you in the right spot have been sacrificed for the sake of the other two categories. I’m not pointing fingers; I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes financially. But I want to do it differently.
There’s also a feeling among some filmmakers that there’s less benefit to going to a festival.
Well, people used to come to festivals to get distribution. But now it’s so hard to get a deal. So we said, “What if filmmakers got paid by a festival the way artists do at Coachella?” We don’t have a ton of money but I kept the overhead low so that between sponsors [Kodak, The Teamsters, AI-safety nonprofit Fathom and others) and ticket sales and everything else, we were able to cover all our costs with 20 percent of revenue. The other 80 percent is going back to filmmakers so they can make their next film.
How does all this tie into your anti-AI stance?
So this is about how the business has changed long before AI — when the tech companies came in and carpetbagged Hollywood. They’ve never been in the entertainment business. They’re in the tech business, which is a different financial ecosystem. It used to be that every time one viewer watched a film one time they paid $15, and the filmmaker got some of that. Then it became $15 so a whole household and anyone they share their password with can watch 5,000 or 10,000 films. It became about subscribers and a totally different setup. That’s never going to benefit a filmmaker.
And you think this affected the quality too, this drive towards quantity.
The north star was always excellent work. Sure, you had movies and TV shows that weren’t great. But everybody wanted to be connected to a really good project. Now with the whole new model, what you get is a conveyor belt of content. Of course there are exceptions. But the north star is not excellent work — it’s the conveyor belt.