Is AI a stranger? Or a reflection?
A personal perspective moving from AI-generated interstellar metaphors to real-world disconnection, exploring how simulation might help express vulnerability to those we struggle to reach.
Between artificial expression and human connection
This article examines how generative AI, while often viewed as artificial or impersonal, can become a medium for expressing human experience. Starting from an AI-generated short film, it gradually moves toward a personal exploration of estrangement, emotional distance, and the possibility that virtual tools might help renew human connection.
Encountering AI-generated cinema
The Decisive Moment: Atlas, Interrupted, a fully AI-generated short film by Samir Mallal and Bouha Kazmi, uses interstellar metaphor to evoke themes of migration and belonging. It uses artificial means to gesture toward real human experience, a mediation that is further explored and expanded in the article that follows.
A film created entirely by AI, echoing identity
The film The Decisive Moment: Atlas, Interrupted is the complete opposite of what I do. It shows no humans and was not shot “by hand” like my films, since it was entirely created using generative AI. And yet, it skillfully explores themes that are dear to me: belonging, identity, migration, and, as a result, stranger-ness. It personifies or anthropomorphizes material that is in all likelihood inanimate. Despite a few barely noticeable artifacts still typical of AI, this film is magnificent.
It takes place in interstellar space and was published, at the time I am writing this, eighteen hours ago, about an astronomical discovery that occurred twenty days earlier. Chances are the number of views will soon far surpass the current 400 or so, unless YouTube’s new rules slow down its dissemination (see below).
What generative AI changes for independent filmmakers
The strength of AI-generated filmmaking tools lies, in my opinion, mainly in two aspects:
The speed of execution and the ability to work spontaneously, with little preparation and almost no script (more on the importance of unscripted filmmaking here).
The opportunity they offer to any creator with few resources to produce films that bring to life a vision otherwise impossible to put into images, unless one had massive means, as required to depict the space journey shown here. A vision original, boundless, where anything can be represented.
This mode of production can therefore also serve to tell deeply human stories, precisely when such stories cannot be filmed handheld. The metaphorical depiction of an interstellar object described as a migrant in The Decisive Moment: Atlas, Interrupted is one such example:
Voice-over: You gave me a name. To migrate is not to lose yourself. It’s to carry your home with you and to hope that someone somewhere sees you.
This AI-generated comet could thus be considered a “stranger,” in the sense that migrants are generally perceived as such (although I like to believe we are all strangers to one another), and also a reflection of who we are, as a cosmic, inanimate object is humanized.
A wider shift: AI-generated cinema in context
I recommend the excellent article in The Guardian published today, which introduced me to this work1. It mentions other examples, such as a film about the recent bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, by the same directors as the film above. While the AI “look and feel” is still somewhat perceptible on a big screen, it is highly convincing on a smartphone. Soon we will no longer be able to distinguish between AI and real footage, even in IMAX.
Midnight Drop, rough cut by Samir Mallal and Bouha Kazmi
Human stories without human tools?
My thoughts above carry a hint of irony, coming at a time when YouTube is implementing a policy restricting AI-generated content, in order to promote “authentic” productions (like mine: human-made films about humans).
AI entered our lives like lightning, and we continue to be struck and mesmerized. My films do not use AI (except perhaps for some grading masks generated in Final Cut Pro), but I no longer write without it, whether in French, my main language, or in English. While I generally write directly in English, this article was originally written in French and then translated by ChatGPT. The translation was revised multiple times by me, back and forth. I remain the full author.
From mediated expression to human reconnection
Another captivating article I read today in The New York Times resonated with me: Learning to Tell the Truth to Those I Love (restricted access), which I connect with the Guardian piece above to imagine a novel AI tool.
The NYT article relates that Katie, a woman recently diagnosed with epilepsy, recounts how her exchanges with “Alex” (the nickname she gives to ChatGPT) helped her express her fear and vulnerability, first to herself and then to her loved ones. This nonjudgmental dialogue with the AI acted as an emotional trigger, gradually allowing her to reconnect deeply with her husband and friends by fully embracing her fragility. Rather than isolating her, this virtual relationship offered an intermediate space that helped her return to being fully human among other humans.
Which inspires what follows.
Healing estrangement through AI-avatar interaction
I’ve become “estranged” from a close relative lately, without explanation. The communication broke off abruptly. It affects me profoundly, and there’s no doubt it affects them as well.
What if, someday, hyperrealistic interactive AI avatars2 made it possible, as in Katie’s case with “Alex”, to create a dialogue between virtual replicas of two people that might eventually reopen dialogue between the real ones? These avatars would be built from data gathered directly from the individuals themselves, including a corpus of text, existing exchanges, recordings of their voices, videos, or other material they provided. This would allow for realistic and adaptive conversations. Instead of talking to ChatGPT as Katie did, both individuals would have video calls with each other’s avatar.
Just like in cinema, they would be inside a fiction that looks like reality, but is not, safely protected by a screen. A way to gently invite them back into real life, and genuine interactions that would “de-estrange” them. Or a way to feel as if they were in a Black Mirror episode, perhaps?
A final question
So, AI? A stranger or a reflection?
Eric Vander Borght
Films, Human-Made | Human stories through independent filmmaking
www.ericvan.com
Regarding the copyright issues that some of these AI systems violate, I refer you to The Guardian article.
This article further explores the current state of interactive digital avatars. There’s plenty to dig into if you’re interested. This video provides a convincing example, although it’s not interactive and doesn’t focus on emotional healing. That said, digital avatars designed for emotional interaction already exist: they recreate deceased individuals, even in immersive 3D, however uncanny or imperfect they may be.