Backrooms director Kane Parsons is not on board with the Hollywood trend of embracing AI in the arts.
While Parsons is well known for being anti-AI, he reiterated the comments while speaking with the Australian.
“If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would” Parsons said. “Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me… there’s so much at stake and so many genuinely harmful consequences already happening.”
Parsons was likely referring to the negative effects of gen AI, like the contamination of drinking water in communities where AI data centers are built.
Parson’s comments have been met mostly positively among the grassroots, which has increasingly grown tired of the push by Hollywood to shove AI into everything.
This push includes Disney, which up until the shutdown of Sora AI, had been planning to collaborate with the app to fill Disney+ with AI-generated content.
Ironically, it is now outsiders to the mainstream such as Kane Parsons, who seem to speak grassroots audiences more than mainstream companies like Disney.
Currently, The Backrooms is beating The Mandalorian and Grogu at the box office by large percentage numbers, and is joined by Obsession (also directed by a YouTuber and Hollywood outsider) in doing so.
While Parsons rejects using AI to make his art, he confirmed that The Backrooms thematically is in part a critique of AI.
“I’m interested in using that iconography in art – not using AI to make the art itself, but examining what it represents. I definitely want to explore it further in future projects,” he added, hinting he’ll continue exploring these themes in future projects.
