Nigerian filmmaker Akay Mason has stated that films generated by artificial intelligence cannot replace the emotional connection created through performances by human actors.
Mason, in a post shared on X on Friday, said AI-generated films lacked the emotional depth that audiences naturally associate with human performances.
“AI films will fail. Every AI short film I’ve seen lacks the emotional connection we instinctively feel when watching actual humans perform. It just feels empty,” he said.
The filmmaker also linked part of the appeal of human actors to celebrity culture and the tendency of audiences to idolise stars.
“Another reason is our tendency toward idolatry and celebrity culture. We love to worship our stars. With AI films, there are no stars to worship. You know the character on screen is nothing but a series of codes,” he said.
Mason, however, acknowledged that AI could serve as a useful filmmaking tool for handling certain technical tasks.
“Sure, filmmakers now use AI as a tool to fix VFX, lighting, or sound issues, and that’s perfectly okay (heck, I even used ChatGPT to fix a few grammatical issues with this post),” he said
He maintained that despite the increasing use of AI in filmmaking, the technology cannot reproduce the essence of a human actor’s performance.
“But if we’re being real, AI actors cannot replace a real actor’s performance, which is, at its core, the expression of the human soul,” he said.
