Danny Boyle's latest movie, Ink, has just premiered at the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, and the movie has caused something of a stir, as the credits disclose that the Trainspotting director used generative AI in the making of the movie. Now Boyle is explaining the movie's limited use cases, which included animating photographs and mice effects.
Ink, which stars 28 Years Later's Jack O'Connell as Sun newspaper editor Larry Lamb, and Guy Pearce as media magnate Rupert Murdoch, is a late-60s/early-70s-set biographical drama, so not the first place you might expect generative AI to be deployed. But speaking to Vanity Fair, Boyle explained both his thoughts on the use of AI, and precisely how it's been used in Ink.
"My opinion of it is it's a very useful tool, in many ways, provided you use it respectfully, and provided you pay actors if you're going to replace them with some kind of AI embodiments or something like that. So just like with any animation project or just as part of the VFX toolbox."
Boyle goes on to confirm "there's about 30 seconds" of generative AI use in Ink, seemingly blissfully unaware of the hornet's nest he's about to stir up. The controversial tech was used in two specific cases, according to Boyle.
"We animate a couple of old photographs, which you'll have seen online. The way that it does that, you can bring old photographs to life. And that's the kind of way we use it. Oh, and there's some mice, it's very good for animals. Because I got in trouble with PETA. We had some chimps at the beginning of 28 Days Later, and they wrote to me and said: 'You must never do that again.' And I haven't. And ever since, I've tried to use CG animals. But AI is very, very good at creating animals, and we got some mice in this one that run around the Sun newsroom."
So there you have it: photographs and mice. Precisely why Boyle couldn't hire a VFX studio and human visual effects artists to animate those old photographs or build those CG mice is currently unclear, as Boyle doesn't appear to have been pushed on the subject by Vanity Fair. Were the VFX artists that generative AI replaced in the making of Ink paid in the same way that Boyle claims actors need to be compensated? I'm betting not.
It's a disappointing position for a trailblazing British filmmaker to take. Prior to Ink, Boyle brought the rage virus back to the big screen in 28 Years Later. A third film in the trilogy, 28 Years Later 3, has yet to be confirmed after the second film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, flopped at the box office. If a Gen AI-filled third 28 Years Later film is what we have to look forward to, maybe it's better left unmade.
Ink releases in US theaters on December 11, and on Netlix in the US and in UK cinemas from January 8. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies heading your way.
