Guillermo del Toro is more worried about “natural stupidity” than anything else, he says in a new keynote address.
Guillermo del Toro delivered the keynote address at the Toronto International Film Festival last week and offered a brief but respective thoughts on both artificial intelligence and the state of animation.
As far as AI goes, del Toro said: “people ask if I’m worried about artificial intelligence, I say I’m worried about natural stupidity. It’s just a tool, right?” Expanding on his thoughts, the Nightmare Alley director said: that“if anyone wants movies made by AI, let them get it immediately. I don’t care about people who want to be fulfilled and get something shitty, quickly.”
As a filmmaker that is renowned for crafting his films to a painstaking degree, del Toro seems unconcerned that he’ll ever be replaced by a machine (Oh, if only the rest of us could be so certain). Alluding to AI’s inability to create something original, he mockingly added, “Otherwise, why not buy a printer, print the Mona Lisa and say you made it?”
On the subject of animation, a technique that he seems increasingly drawn to these days, the filmmaker said, “I wish people understood it’s a medium, and not a genre. Some of the most important movies have been made in animation. Even what we call computer animation. It’s not. It’s figures that have to be animated and its a direct transmission of personality from the animator to the model, and stop-motion being the most promiscuous of all of that.”
In the last year, del Toro has been talking up the chances of him making a permanent move into stop motion animation at some point in the future. Last year he crafted a beautiful stop motion take on Pinocchio for Netflix and has a take on Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Sleeping Giant, brewing into a stop motion feature. The book ‘follows an elderly British couple living in a fictional post-Arthurian England in which no one can retain their long-term memories’ and has this beautiful dream-like quality which will suit both the medium and del Toro’s style. We’ll bring you updates on this project as we hear them.
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