This year’s Cannes attitude toward AI is a curse word, plus a check.
If the most iconic moment of this year's 79th Cannes International Film Festival wasn't on the red carpet with movie stars swishing their dresses, it was in the Debussy Hall just before the opening ceremony.
That night, immediately after the 20th-anniversary 4K restoration of Pan’s Labyrinth concluded, the lights came up. The acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro stepped onto the stage. The Mexican filmmaker behind The Shape of Water and an Oscar winner for Best Director offered no introduction—he simply grabbed the microphone and declared, “Fuck AI.”
Image source: Deadline
The audience paused for a second in stunned silence, then burst into laughter and applause. Standing beside them, Cannes Film Festival Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux immediately elevated this statement to the level of an official position, saying: “This is the first political declaration of this year’s Cannes!”
At that moment, everyone in the room was united in outrage, eager to defend the dignity of human cinema at all costs, raising the atmosphere to its peak. But this sacred artistic atmosphere didn’t even last through the night.
After chanting the slogan, everyone stepped out of the venue and looked up to see that Meta, the world’s largest AI giant, was this year’s official sponsor of the Cannes International Film Festival. A few steps further, they discovered that Kuaishou’s Keling AI was also a partner, with a booth at the Film Market.
This conflicting and subtle atmosphere is a true reflection of this year’s Cannes.
Organic movies and cheat movies
Meta has replaced TikTok as the Official Partner of the Cannes Film Festival, signing a long-term strategic partnership agreement, placing it on equal footing with established sponsors such as Chopard and BMW.
Meta didn’t just print its logo on the official backdrop—it integrated its AI glasses and real-time translation technology directly into the red carpet and official events.
Image source: Meta
Kuaishou’s Keling secured a dedicated event at the Marché du Film, showcasing on the main stage how AI can be used to create theatrical-length films.
One dominates the red carpet traffic, while the other discusses the foundation of film production in the exhibition hall. Faced with this surrounding pressure, Art Director Fu Mao finds it challenging to maintain the dignity of cinema’s highest殿堂.
At the subsequent media briefing, Fu Mao clearly stated that AI-generated content would be strictly banned from the main competition. He asserted that Cannes will always stand on the side of screenwriters, actors, and voice artists—all those whose livelihoods could be threatened by AI.
To prove the superiority of human-made films, Foma invoked the old story of legendary director Coppola making Apocalypse Now. He called it the last “organic film” in cinematic history. He sarcastically remarked that back then, Coppola actually spent real money to deploy over a dozen helicopters to the set, whereas today’s directors merely need to say, “Add fifteen helicopters to the shot.” In Foma’s evaluation system, a film must preserve authentic documentation of the physical world—any technology that casually alters visuals is a form of cheating.
Exploring behind-the-scenes footage and stories is also part of fan culture | Reddit
While publicly expressing opposition to AI’s “invasion” of content creation, they quietly accept money from AI companies. It’s easy to understand Cannes’s dilemma and compromise.
Traditional major studios and the film industry have had a tough few years, as their market share has been squeezed by streaming platforms and budgets continue to shrink. Moreover, in terms of content distribution, the Cannes Film Festival is also facing a midlife crisis.
It’s not that film festivals are no longer important, but rather that people’s viewing habits have long been reshaped by short videos and social media. Compared to sitting quietly in a cinema for two hours, today’s younger audiences have their attention fragmented by dozens of seconds of short-form videos.
For Cannes, if it doesn’t want to slowly become an insular self-indulgence of the film industry, it must find ways to reconnect with the internet generation. Meta’s platforms—Instagram, Threads, and even various smart wearable devices—serve as ready-made entry points. Influencers can instantly transform stars, premieres, gossip, and controversies into viral online traffic.
While defending the boundaries of art, yielding to commercial realities is more of a survival strategy to stay alive.
Moreover, not all filmmakers are saying “Fuck AI” with del Toro—especially those with a technical background, who see things much more clearly.
Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings, is a prime example. He personally founded Weta Digital, one of the world’s leading visual effects companies, and has spent decades pushing the boundaries of film technology. At a masterclass at Cannes, he openly criticized the industry’s panic over AI as utterly unfounded. To Jackson, AI is not a threat—it’s simply another ordinary visual effects tool, no different from any other visual technology.
Weta Digital has been acquired by the renowned game engine Unity to create realistic virtual worlds together | Unity
Among the actors, veteran actress Demi Moore openly voiced opposition at the jury press conference. She believes resistance is futile—AI is already here, and instead of living in constant fear, we should focus on learning how to coexist with it.
The organizing committee's resistance is a statement, but running a business requires the tools of cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Therefore, let art be upstairs and business be downstairs.
Talk more about business, less about ideology.
The Cannes Film Market downstairs is the real hub of fame and fortune.
As the world’s largest film trading platform, producers, distributors, and buyers conduct business here daily—few discuss film ontology or artistic purity; everyone holds ledgers, budgets, and schedules.
Kuaishou’s Keling AI set up a booth here with a grand scale, boldly securing the main stage at the Palais des Festivals for a major special event on May 18. The theme of the event was straightforward: “From Creativity to Production Reality.”
Image source: Kling AI
This is equivalent to telling buyers around the world: don’t treat us like lab toys—AI can now step right onto set and handle real work.
Keling demonstrated several practical cases on-site, including the animated film Born of the Tide—a fully AI-generated animation and the flagship project heavily promoted by Keling at Cannes. In addition to this purely AI-created animation, they also showcased House of David, a Hollywood-caliber production, and RAPHAEL, a feature-length film directly aimed at theatrical release. All of these are real projects actively progressing through the film production pipeline.
In this context, what people care about is very practical: Can a large model instantly summon a dozen helicopters to save millions in budget? Can AI automatically sync lip movements to seamlessly replace English with French, allowing the film to earn another sale of European rights?
The fate of art may still rest with the panel of veteran directors upstairs, but capital’s vote has likely already leaned toward AI. The millions saved in budget and the additional overseas copyright sales are far more tangible than any “political statement.”
In the trading arena, no one talks about art—everyone only cares about the ledger. That’s reality.
Can AI create art? Do movies still care about copyright?
Traditional industries guard against AI like they would against thieves, but the AI industry has no intention of enduring such treatment indefinitely. Since they’re not welcome at the main table, they’ll simply set up their own table next door.
Back in April, the second World Artificial Intelligence Film Festival (WAIFF) was held next to the main venue in Cannes.
This event has no official connection to the current 79th Cannes International Film Festival, but it is cleverly held at the same venue—the Cannes Film Palace. While the official Cannes festival rolls out a red carpet, WAIFF laid down a purple carpet symbolizing technology. This move—setting up a direct challenge right at the doorstep—is nothing short of a bold, face-to-face showdown.
Image source: WAIFF
But this is by no means a small-time, amateur film festival. The event is backed by local government agencies in France. The organizing committee even invited Gong Li, who not only served as the chair of the jury but also personally designed the award trophy. Meanwhile, leading Chinese large model companies like MiniMax are deeply involved.
Gong Li, not only serving as chairperson, also personally designed the WAIFF trophy | WAIFF
This scheme is a collaboration between tech giants, creators seeking transformation, and institutions. Since the old殿堂 has high barriers to entry, let’s build a new skyscraper on this hallowed ground of film history.
So, can AI-generated videos be considered art?
View the入围 entries for WAIFF directly. Objectively speaking, some experimental works can indeed be convincing.
For example, the Chinese-style short film "Yinian," which won an award, features visuals entirely in ink-wash texture with immense visual impact—you’d hardly believe it’s all generated by code. Other films adopt clever stylistic approaches, like "Crested Ibis," which uses Shaanxi dialect for its voiceover, or "Land Without Shores," filled with Hokkien. When dialects come in, the warmth of humanity naturally follows.
Image source: Hedie Technology
However, AI-generated videos still have significant limitations and gaps. Most are 1- to 2-minute “visual mood boards” or “concept trailers.” While they achieve a high baseline in single-frame generation and can produce visual spectacles through computational power, they remain highly disjointed in terms of actual long-form cinematography, shot continuity, and core narrative logic.
Or put another way, current AI-generated films and TV shows are more like the product of parameter tuning. They can mimic ink-wash brushstrokes and clone rugged dialects, but they still struggle to tell a compelling, breathing story that resonates emotionally. Today’s AI is still in the phase of mass-producing visually stunning shots.
Traditional artists dismiss AI, primarily because the most critical flaw in AI-generated works is their inherent copyright infringement.
Large models have ingested vast amounts of artwork by illustrators and photographers without authorization—a fact long known within the industry. During this AI film festival, a nominated short film was found to be heavily plagiarized from the Oscar-winning animated film "Wallace & Gromit." The characters were too similar, and under pressure from the entire industry, the organizers were forced to cancel its screening and disqualify it from competition.
The Southern Min AI film "Land Without Shores" tells a story of intergenerational and cultural conflict between a mother and daughter | Qingshan Film & Animation Studio
Faced with this blatant plagiarism, French acclaimed director Mathieu Kassovitz, who won major awards for "La Haine," swore on stage: “What the fuck?” He also issued a stern warning that anyone who dares to misuse his classic film with AI will face him in court.
But magically, when he shifted to talking about his upcoming AI studio in Paris and his plans to use AI to make a new film, this guy shouted, “Fuck copyright!”
Pure nonsense, extreme hypocrisy—ultimately, it’s all because using AI is just too cost-effective.
A 22-year-old young director revealed live at WAIFF that the AI-generated visual depiction of Alzheimer’s in his film cost only €500—whereas traditional special effects would have required at least €20,000.
The movie "Again and Again and Again and Again and Again and Again" has died.
Many will surely ask, “Can’t you broaden your perspective?” Throughout the long history where technology and humanities intersect, the drama of “resisting AI” is nothing more than a remake of an old story.
The film and television industry's attitude toward the technological wave follows the classic screenplay structure of “beginning, development, turn, and resolution”: panic and resistance, reluctant acceptance, gradual embrace, and quiet integration.
Flip through the history of cinema, and you'll find that this art form has reliably "died" every few decades since its inception.
A hundred years ago, when talkies emerged, silent film masters were devastated. They believed that when actors began to speak, the pure art of physical expression was ruined. The prevailing consensus at the time was that cinema died with the arrival of sound.
By the 1970s, George Lucas created Star Wars and Industrial Light & Magic. The industry’s traditionalists grew uneasy again: previously, film special effects relied on miniatures and physical sets—tangible, hands-on craftsmanship. Lucas’s computer-controlled cameras and early digital compositing technologies were dismissed by contemporaries as mere “tricks and gimmicks.” Many declared that with the arrival of special effects, cinema was doomed.
Image source: "Light and Magic" / Industrial Light & Magic
After the millennium, as digital camera resolutions crossed a critical threshold, lightweight digital cameras became widespread, eliminating the need for crews to haul heavy film equipment between locations. A group of dedicated film purists lamented the death of cinema, arguing that without the chemical grain of film, movies had lost their soul.
Do you remember what was causing movies to struggle before the AI boom? The rise of streaming.
Those years, Cannes led the charge against Netflix, firmly refusing to allow streaming films into the main competition, insisting that anything not shown on the big screen wasn’t a real movie. Unsurprisingly, as soon as streaming emerged, cinema once again declared itself dead.
But after all these years of turmoil, has cinema died? Not at all.
Film has become an audiovisual art form; special effects have created sci-fi spectacles; digital cinematography has lowered the barrier to entry for young filmmakers; and streaming platforms allow audiences to watch premieres from the comfort of their beds. Far from dying, film has only grown richer and more diverse.
The veteran artists still have too strong a sense of artistic ethics, while the technological optimists see history playing out once again.
When cameras were introduced, they didn’t destroy painting. As long as there are people behind the lens willing to use the tools, they will only expand the boundaries of art.
References
[1] https://artthreat.net/31870-73006-demi-moore-says-film-industry-shouldn-t-fight-ai-at-cannes-film-festival/
[2] https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260503A06HV700?suid=&media_id=
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/26/cannes-ai-film-festival-raises-eyebrows-questions-future
This article is from the WeChat public account "Guokr" (ID: Guokr42), author: Gaoji Dongwu, editor: Shen Zhihan.