Australian film-maker Alex Proyas: 'broken' movie industry needs to be rebuilt and 'AI can help us do that'

At a time when capitalist forces are driving much of the advancement in artificial intelligence, Alex Proyas sees the use of AI in film-making as a source of artistic liberation. While many in the film sector see the emergence of artificial intelligence as a threat to their careers, livelihoods and even likenesses, the Australian film-maker behind The Crow, Dark City and I, Robot, believes the technology will make it much easier and cheaper to get projects off the ground. "The model for film-makers, who are the only people I really care about at the end of the day, is broken … and it's not AI that's causing that," Proyas tells the Guardian. He says residuals that film-makers used to rely on between projects are drying up in the streaming era, and the budgets for projects becoming smaller. "We need to rebuild it from the ground up. I believe AI can help us do that, because as it lowers the cost threshold to produce stuff, and as every month goes by, it's lowering it and lowering it, we can do more for less, and we can hopefully retain more ownership of those projects," he says.