Daniel Kwan has a lot to say on the subject of artificial intelligence.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker — one half of The Daniels directing team behind Everything Everywhere All at Once alongside Daniel Scheinert — returned to Sundance in January alongside Scheinert and their producer Jonathan Wang to support the world premiere of Focus Features’ The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, which they produced for another directing team in Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell.
Amid a busy festival schedule, Kwan ducked into the Pendry Park City to headline the THR x Autodesk AI and Independent Filmmaking panel presented in partnership with the Berggruen Institute on Jan. 25. The program also featured conversations with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, filmmaker Noah Segan, producer Janet Yang and Autodesk’s Matthew Sivertson in chats moderated by THR’s Mia Galuppo and Stacey Wilson Hunt.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Janet Yang, Noah Segan, Daniel Kwan and Matthew Sivertson ahead of the THR x Autodesk “AI and Independent Filmmaking” panel at Sundance.
Credit: The Hollywood Reporter
Kwan kicked things off, but before diving headfirst into all things AI, the filmmaker looked back on a milestone Sundance anniversary. He and Scheinert made their Sundance debut 10 years ago with the Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano starrer Swiss Army Man, which was acquired out of the fest by A24 and earned them best director trophies.
“Ten years is kind of wild,” Kwan said, before launching into a warning about the social media trend that inspired countless users to post retrospective 2016 photos on multiple platforms from Instagram to TikTok to Threads. “I’ve been thinking a lot about 2016 because of that trend right now. By the way, don’t do that. They’re using that to train their machines on you to show how people age. Stop it, stop posting stuff, OK? Just be careful, OK? Be careful with these things.”
Actually, Kwan emphasized care, caution and vigilance throughout the nearly 30-minute discussion, which covered The AI Doc, the recently launched Creators Coalition on AI and the urgency to participate at this critical juncture before AI companies set the rules of engagement and leave various industries and the general public to pick up the pieces: “We are not ready for this and we are the collateral damage.”
“We are currently in a transition,” Kwan acknowledged. “Things are coming to an end, but that also means something else is coming. If we can all agree that that’s true, we first have to mourn the things that are ending but protect what really matters in that mourning. Once we see what’s coming to an end, we can protect what matters and plant the seeds for what’s coming next. So much of my work is motivated by that one single principle, whether it’s in AI or the stories I’m telling, the movies that Daniel and I are trying to make as this old world ends. What can we protect? What can we fight for? What can we plant for the next world?”
In the immediate future, they’ll be planting The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. The film is set for release on March 27, and Kwan said it covers all the main AI issues and features nearly all of the big names from the industry. What it doesn’t cover is his regret in making it.
“A wonderful team worked for the past over three years on this doc, and we spent a lot of time just trying to figure out how do we show people what the main drivers are behind everything that’s happening? How do we get past all the bullshit, all the hype and all of that noise to show people some sort of way to regain some agency?” he explained. “Every other month I regretted saying yes to this project, if I’m being very honest. Honestly, I’m sick of talking about AI. Who else is sick of talking about AI? I don’t want to just be negative because this technology is both good and bad at the same time. Just like any other technology, every tool can be used for good and for bad. You can build things and break things with the same tool. The problem is with human nature, and entropy, in general. Oftentimes, building things is much harder than breaking things and, right now, the breaking things is much easier.”
That said, Kwan noted how AI technology can both be “amazing” and “terrible” for filmmakers. “The one thing that we all have to agree on is that this technology is incompatible with our current systems, our current institutions, our current labor laws. It carves a bunch of lines through all these walls that we’ve put up over the last 100 years.”
As AI carves those lines, Kwan said it is imperative that industries, like Hollywood, band together to help set the guardrails. “This is an all-hands-on-deck situation,” he said. “How do we imagine a world where this tool is not just something that we’re fighting but also something that can transform our industry to make it much better? Be honest, our industry is not perfect.”
Kwan speaks during the THR x Autodesk “AI and Independent Filmmaking” panel at Sundance.
Credit: The Hollywood Reporter
The moment during the panel that generated the most laughter and response from the nearly 100 or so guests in the room came when Kwan used a “sex positive” analogy to describe the best response to widespread adoption of AI tools.
“It’s a crude one, but it’s worth saying because it sticks,” he explained before launching into it. “We’re all sex positive here [so imagine if] you have a relationship with someone. They’re loving and it’s great, but they’re not always the best communicator. They say, ‘Hey, we’re having an orgy. We’re bringing a bunch of people over. Doesn’t that sound great?’ And you’re like, ‘Hold on. Who’s coming? What are the rules? What are the safe words?’ And they’re like, ‘No, no, no, no. Look at the tools and the toys we have. We’re going to have a dungeon.’ This is what the tech industry feels like to a lot of crew members.”
