Steven Soderbergh used AI in his John Lennon documentary and critics are divided at Cannes

Steven Soderbergh used AI in a documentary about John Lennon. And he wants to talk about it

CANNES, France (AP) -- The day John Lennon was shot, on Dec. 8, 1980, he and Yoko Ono gave an interview to a San Francisco radio crew from their home in New York's Dakota Apartments. They were promoting their new album "Double Fantasy," but the two-hour conversation was wide ranging. Though the interviewers had been warned "no Beatles questions," Lennon and Ono were thrillingly open. That day, Annie Leibovitz also shot the famous portrait of a clothes-less Lennon wrapped around Ono. The interview is similarly naked. The two, particularly Lennon, riff on love, their relationship, creativity, life after the Beatles, raising their toddler son, writing songs in bed and much more. At the age of 40, Lennon sounds like someone who has found real clarity. "I feel like nothing happened before today," said Lennon. In "John Lennon: The Last Interview," Steven Soderbergh turns those surviving tapes into a documentary that does as much to demystify Lennon and Ono as "Get Back" did to the Beatles. The film debuted Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. "I was just so compelled by their generosity of spirit throughout the conversation," Soderbergh explained in an interview Saturday in Cannes. "It's like the world took place in one day, in this apartment." Making it posed an acute problem. Soderbergh was resolved to let the audio play. He could finds ways to visualize much of the film, but that still left a large gap where the conversation grows more philosophical. "I worked on everything that could be solved except that for as long as I could," Soderbergh says. "Then there was the inevitable moment of: OK, but really what are we going to do? We just started playing and ran out of time and money. That's where the Meta piece came in." Soderbergh accepted an offer to use Meta's artificial intelligence software to conjure imagery for those sections, which make up about 10% of the film. When Soderbergh let the news out earlier this year, it prompted an uproar. One of America's leading filmmakers was using AI? In a film about a Beatle, no less? The AI parts (overwhelmingly slammed by critics in Cannes) are fairly banal and don't differ greatly from special effects. But Soderbergh put himself at the forefront of an industrywide debate about the uses of AI in moviemaking. For Soderbergh, who has made movies on iPhones, it's a conversation he's eager to have. SODERBERGH: Transparency is so important (in) that the world outside of the creative context, we're not aware of the extent that this is being used and used to manipulate us. We don't know because they're not telling. We find out after, by accident, by some whistle blower. I'm like my own whistle blower: "This is what he's doing." SODERBERGH: I knew what was coming. I take it very seriously, and I understand why people have an emotional response to this subject. As I've said before, I feel like I owe people the best version of whatever art I'm trying to make and total transparency about how I'm doing it. But, yeah, you don't say yes to Meta offering you these tools and offering to finish the film and not know you're going to come in for some heat. That was part of the deal. SODERBERGH: I think most jobs that matter when you're making a movie cannot be performed by this tech and never will be performed by this tech. As it becomes possible for anybody to create something that meets a certain standard of technical perfection, then imperfection becomes more valuable and more interesting. We haven't seen yet someone with a certain amount of creative credibility go full-metal AI on something, and see how people react. I think it's necessary. How do you know where the line is until somebody crosses it? I don't think what I'm doing crosses it. Some people may disagree. I don't know where my line is yet. I'm waiting to see. SODERBERGH: Circles of light that come out of nowhere, things like that. A black rose that turns into a Busby Berkeley thing and then a red rose. I wasn't very articulate to the people I was working with. It was hard to describe the things I wanted to see. The good part about this technology was at least ability to have something in front of me quickly that I could respond to. SODERBERGH: I've determined my rule is: It has to be necessary. Is it the only way to accomplish what I want to see? Is it truly the best way to do it? That's the real question. You're going to see a lot of people doing stuff with AI that fail those two challenges. SODERBERGH: I needed a way to follow them in flight visually, or I'm not doing my job. It's hard to judge how long it will take us to find homeostasis with this technology. I think we will. Just looking at this technology in the movie making business, each department has or will have a very different relationship with it. I'll have a different relationship than a writer, than an actor, than the costume designer, the production designer, the sound effects people. Each creative person is going to have their own prism and be affected by it in different ways. Our inherent desire to have a simple template for how this is to be approached is part of the problem. I don't think that's possible. I don't think there's a one-size fits all. SODERBERGH: Especially his burning desire to destroy the male rock star myth -- at a time when that was not the mood anyone else was in. That's inspiring. What I hope young people who see it get out of it is: This guy told the truth about everything from the jump, right up through the last day of his life. He just was built that way. And he was constructive. He was very opinionated but also very thoughtful and all in the aid of: Can we do this better? Can we do a better version of human beings on this planet?

Soderbergh used Meta's AI in his Lennon documentary. Critics hated it. He says that's the point.

Steven Soderbergh's "John Lennon: The Last Interview" premiered on Saturday at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. Built around a never-before-released two-hour-and-45-minute radio interview that Lennon and Yoko Ono gave to a San Francisco KFRC radio crew from their home in New York's Dakota Apartments on December 8, 1980, hours before Lennon was shot and killed, the 97-minute documentary is being discussed at Cannes less for what Lennon said than for how Soderbergh chose to visualise it. Approximately 10% of the film's visuals were generated using Meta's AI software. Soderbergh disclosed the partnership earlier this year and has been characteristically direct about the backlash that followed. "I knew what was coming," he told the Associated Press in Cannes on Saturday. "You don't say yes to Meta offering you these tools and offering to finish the film and not know you're going to come in for some heat. That was part of the deal." The AI-generated sections, which critics at Cannes overwhelmingly criticised, are abstract and surreal: circles of light, a black rose morphing into a choreographic pattern, paint colours mixing in split screen alongside lovers caressing. There are no deepfakes of Lennon. The sequences were created for passages where the conversation turns philosophical and no archival footage exists to illustrate the ideas being discussed. Soderbergh assembled more than 1,000 photographs and video clips from the archive to cover the rest of the film, editing them to the rhythm of the conversation in what reviewers have described as a hyperkinetic photo album. Soderbergh's framework for when AI is justified in filmmaking is simple: "It has to be necessary. Is it the only way to accomplish what I want to see? Is it truly the best way to do it?" He said the surreal sequences would have been prohibitively expensive to produce using conventional visual effects, and that the AI tools allowed him to iterate quickly on imagery he struggled to articulate verbally. "I wasn't very articulate to the people I was working with," he said. "It was hard to describe the things I wanted to see. The good part about this technology was at least the ability to have something in front of me quickly that I could respond to." The broader argument Soderbergh is making is about transparency, not permission. "In the world outside of the creative context, we're not aware of the extent that this is being used and used to manipulate us," he said. "We don't know because they're not telling. We find out after, by accident, by some whistle blower. I'm like my own whistle blower." The position is deliberately provocative: the problem, Soderbergh argues, is not that he used AI, but that he told people he used AI, while countless others are using it without disclosure. That argument aligns with data published this week by Canva, whose State of Marketing and AI Report found that 97% of marketing leaders now use AI daily, while 78% of consumers still prefer human-made creative work and 87% say the best advertising requires a human touch. Mentions of "AI slop" have increased ninefold. The gap between how widely AI is being used and how willing creators are to admit it is the structural dishonesty Soderbergh is pointing at. His position on AI's threat to filmmaking jobs is more measured than most industry voices. "I think most jobs that matter when you're making a movie cannot be performed by this tech and never will be performed by this tech," he said. "As it becomes possible for anybody to create something that meets a certain standard of technical perfection, then imperfection becomes more valuable and more interesting." The formulation inverts the usual anxiety: rather than AI raising the floor and eliminating human work, Soderbergh suggests it will make distinctively human imperfection the scarce and therefore valuable commodity. The film industry has been cautiously integrating AI tools for several years. Flawless AI's DeepEditor, which digitally alters video to synchronise actors' lip movements with dubbed audio tracks, has been deployed in mainstream productions since 2022 with the consent of performers through its Artistic Rights Treasury platform. The SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023 established that any meaningful digital alterations to performances require explicit actor consent. Soderbergh's use case is different: he is not altering existing performances but generating entirely new visual content to accompany audio that has no corresponding video. The ethical territory is less charted. The documentary itself, critics largely agree, is powerful regardless of the AI controversy. The Wrap called it a film that "does as much to demystify Lennon and Ono as 'Get Back' did to the Beatles." Variety described the AI sections as the weakest part of an otherwise immersive experience. The conversation, edited by Soderbergh and Nancy Main from 165 minutes to 97, captures Lennon at 40 in a state of unusual clarity, talking about love, parenthood, creativity, and his desire to destroy what he called the "male rock star myth" at a time when nobody else in rock music was interested in doing so. "What I hope young people who see it get out of it is: This guy told the truth about everything from the jump, right up through the last day of his life," Soderbergh said. "He was very opinionated but also very thoughtful and all in the aid of: Can we do this better? Can we do a better version of human beings on this planet?" The copyright and creative integrity questions that AI raises in filmmaking are not resolved by one documentary or one director's framework. Soderbergh acknowledges this openly. "I don't know where my line is yet. I'm waiting to see," he said. "Each creative person is going to have their own prism and be affected by it in different ways. Our inherent desire to have a simple template for how this is to be approached is part of the problem. I don't think that's possible." The film does not have a distributor yet. It was financed in part by Meta, which provided both the AI tools and funding to complete the project. Whether audiences beyond Cannes will have the chance to judge the AI sequences for themselves, or whether the controversy will overshadow the conversation it was built to preserve, is a question that will be answered by whoever decides to buy it.

Steven Soderbergh's AI-assisted John Lennon documentary is already dividing Cannes -- and some critics say the visuals overwhelmed the emotion

Critics are fiercely divided over the director's decision to include AI-generated visuals in the film * Steven Soderbergh's new John Lennon documentary sparked controversy at Cannes over its use of Meta AI-generated visuals * Critics praised the Lennon interview itself but heavily criticized the film's surreal AI-assisted sequences * The debate around the documentary has become part of Hollywood's larger fight over artificial intelligence in filmmaking Steven Soderbergh arrived at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend with a documentary built around one of the most haunting recordings in music history. The director's new film, "John Lennon: The Last Interview," uses a never-before-released radio interview Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded inside the Dakota Apartments on December 8, 1980, the same day Lennon was killed. By the end of its premiere, though, much of the discussion had shifted away from John Lennon entirely and toward artificial intelligence. The documentary mixes archival photographs, audio recordings, and experimental visuals to recreate the atmosphere of the conversation. What has sparked immediate controversy is that Meta AI helped generate some of the visuals. Soderbergh openly acknowledged that partnering with Meta on an AI-assisted film was guaranteed to irritate people. And critics at the festival largely targeted the movie's surreal visual sequences, which appear during moments where Lennon drifts into abstract discussions about creativity, identity, and human behavior. Rather than attempting realistic recreations, the film cuts to dreamlike imagery, including flowers dissolving into geometric patterns, shifting pools of light, and painterly moving textures that feel closer to an experimental art installation than a traditional music documentary. For some reviewers, those sequences were distracting enough to overshadow the emotional power of the interview itself. AI controversy Just a few years ago, most conversations around AI in filmmaking were theoretical. Now studios, editors, visual effects artists, and directors are actively experimenting with the technology while audiences grow increasingly suspicious of anything that feels synthetic. The documentary avoids many of the uses of AI that people fear most. There are no deepfake voices or images of Lennon. The AI imagery functions more like a visual aid for audio recordings. Soderbergh has argued that the technology simply gave him a way to create abstract visuals quickly and cheaply in places where conventional effects work would have been difficult or prohibitively expensive. According to the director, many filmmakers and media companies are already using AI tools quietly while pretending otherwise. In his view, the unusual part is not the use of AI itself, but admitting to it publicly. Lennon AI The AI debate surrounding the film has grown so large that it threatens to swallow the documentary itself, which has generally garnered positive reviews beyond the AI discussion. A respected director premiering a John Lennon documentary with Meta credited as a technology partner was always going to trigger alarms inside the film world. Still, the documentary feels like an experiment unfolding in public, not a major manifesto. Cannes simply turned the existing AI tensions into a very public spectacle. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Steven Soderbergh Confirms Use of AI Images in 'John Lennon: The Last Interview' Documentary

Director Steven Soderbergh has revealed how he embraced using AI-generated images in his new documentary about John Lennon's final interview. Soderbergh's film John Lennon: The Last Interview premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. The documentary captures the final in-depth conversation Lennon ever gave before he was assassinated. On December 8, 1980, Lennon and Yoko Ono sat down with a small radio crew in their New York apartment to promote the release of their album Double Fantasy. The pair had not long posed for photographer Annie Leibovitz's famous portrait of a naked Lennon wrapped around Ono. What followed during that interview with the former Beatles member was an unfiltered, wide-ranging discussion about music, politics, fatherhood, and life. Just hours later, Lennon was killed. In his upcoming documentary, Soderberg turns those surviving tapes into a documentary and presents the complete Lennon interview for the first time. The interview is framed by reflections from people who were there at the time, presenting him at the peak of his creative and personal life and openly focused on a future he would tragically not live to see. Soderberg, who is behind films such as Erin Brockovich and Traffic, has been sharing how he used AI generative technology in making the documentary. The director has explained that while the majority of John Lennon: The Last Interview is composed of archival footage and stills, he also uses a handful of fantasy images created by AI. "AI has been helpful in creating thematically surreal images that occupy a dream space rather than a literal space," Soderbergh says about the documentary in an interview with Filmmaker magazine. He adds: "Ninety percent of the visuals are archival stills, and 10 minutes, spread out over the 90-minute film, are these little pockets of images we created whenever they start talking philosophically." In the same interview, Soderberg admits that the technology "desperately requires very close human supervision. But Soderberg also says he is planning on using "a lot of AI" for his next movie with Narcos star Wagner Moura set during the Spanish-American War. In a further interview with AP News, Soderbergh says that he has decided to be transparent about his use of AI in his filmmaking despite the technology still being extremely debated and controversial in Hollywood. "Transparency is so important (in) that the world outside of the creative context, we're not aware of the extent that this is being used and used to manipulate us. We don't know because they're not telling. We find out after, by accident, by some whistleblower." Soderbegh tells AP News. I'm like my own whistleblower: "This is what he's doing." Sodebergh's admission comes after Janice Min, a former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and CEO of Ankler Media, described what she sees as a culture of secrecy around AI use in Hollywood. Filmmakers are facing growing scrutiny over the technology, particularly after The Brutalist was criticized for using AI to enhance Adrien Brody's Hungarian accent -- a controversy some commentators suggested may have hurt the film's momentum in the Best Picture Oscar race last year. "The thing with AI right now in Hollywood: Everyone's lying just a little bit," says Min. "Studios are lying about how much they're using it."