That polarized thinking can make it difficult to have nuanced conversations about what film’s AI future can realistically look like. All spoke about balancing human artistry with AI tools — and stressed the importance of clarity on such a broad topic. “I get particularly annoyed at the word ‘AI,’ because it means different things for different people. So the question becomes, how do you even create the platform to have that conversation the way we talk about anything else?” Clark explained that using AI tools to make his short film “Silent Valley” landed him a meeting with Ridley Scott, who echoed his belief that AI tools ultimately serve human storytelling processes.