'Our characters are cybernetic or larger than life,' said Zak London, the founder of Gossip Goblin. 'We adapt to the limits of AI acting.' 'Our characters are cybernetic or larger than life,' said Zak London, the founder of Gossip Goblin. 'We adapt to the limits of AI acting.' 'There are no rules': spotlight on Gossip Goblin as AI film-making enters new era Defying criticisms of'slop' and'theft', the growing culture of AI-powered creativity is attracting interest from Hollywood In a former hemstitching workshop where artisans sewed pleats for Stockholm's 19th-century bourgeoisie, a distinctly 21st-century craft is taking root: AI film-making. One day last week, an actor, director and composer squeezed into a tiny studio booth to record a voiceover for their next AI release. But this had a distinctly homespun feel, the little team fussing over a monologue by a poetic Scottish gorilla inhabiting a transhumanist cyberpunk universe.

A still from animated film La Sélection Mécanique, directed by Jules Blachier. A still from animated film La Sélection Mécanique, directed by Jules Blachier. While emerging technology is banned from the Palme d'Or, an upstart movement is gaining investment and attention I n Cannes' darkened screening rooms, the supposed future of cinema flickered into life this week and it was strange. The first edition of the World AI film festival (WAIFF) showcased visions of men with fish scales erupting from their necks and seaweed from their mouths, a heroine with a heart beating outside her body and so many massed armies of AI-generated tanned men sweeping across battlefields that David Lean would have blushed. Last week the Cannes film festival, entering its 76th year, banned the emerging technology from its Palme d'Or competition, insisting "AI imitates very well but it will never feel deep emotions".

Requiem for a film-maker: Darren Aronofsky's AI revolutionary war series is a horror I f you happen to find yourself stumbling through Time magazine's YouTube account, perhaps because you are a time traveller from the 1970s who doesn't fully understand how the present works yet - then you will be presented with something that many believe represents the vanguard of entertainment as we know it. On This Day 1776 is a series of short videos depicting America's revolutionary war. What makes On This Day notable is that it was made by Darren Aronofsky's studio Primordial Soup. What also makes it interesting is that it was created with AI. The third thing that makes it interesting is that it is terrible.

Mallal says he wants to see a "broadly accessible and easy-to-use programme where artists are compensated for their work". Beeban Kidron, a cross-bench peer and leading campaigner against the government proposals, says AI film-making tools are "fantastic" but "at what point are they going to realise that these tools are literally built on the work of creators?" She adds: "Creators need equity in the new system or we lose something precious." YouTube says its terms and conditions allow Google to use creators' work for making AI models – and denies that all of YouTube's inventory has been used to train its models. Mallal calls his use of AI to make films "prompt craft", a phrase that uses the term for giving instructions to AI systems. When making the Ukraine film, he says he was amazed at how quickly a camera angle or lighting tone could be adjusted with a few taps on a keyboard.

For years, dual roles have been played largely for laughs. Think of Adam Sandler's Razzie-sweeping twin turn in Jack and Jill, or Lisa Kudrow as both Phoebe and Ursula Buffay on Friends. Eddie Murphy was always particularly prolific, his most multiplicitous performance as a clutch of Klumps for Nutty Professor II. There are exceptions, of course. But for every Legend or The Prestige there are ten Austin Powers, Bowfingers and – shudder – Norbits.

The first piece of AI-generated video I ever made moved me to tears – tears of laughter. Given the chance to fool around with Runway AI's Gen-3 Alpha, I dropped in an image of an eagle carrying off a wolf. Moments later, the picture sprang into life. Except the bird only had one leg – and its plummeting prey sprouted wings from its tail and morphed into a wolf-headed goose. It was weird and hilarious.

Lionsgate has signed a deal with the artificial intelligence research firm Runway, allowing it access to the company's large film and TV library to train a new generative model. According to the Wall Street Journal, the model will be "customized to Lionsgate's proprietary portfolio" which includes hit franchises such as John Wick, Saw and The Hunger Games. The aim is to help film-makers and other creatives "augment their work" through the use of AI. "Runway is a visionary, best-in-class partner who will help us utilize AI to develop cutting-edge, capital-efficient content creation opportunities," said Michael Burns, Lionsgate's vice-chair. "Several of our film-makers are already excited about its potential applications to their pre-production and post-production process. We view AI as a great tool for augmenting, enhancing and supplementing our current operations."

Before bashing out emails and text messages by thumb became an accepted form of communication, typing was a fully manual skill. In the 80s, "the office" was an exclusive preserve for freaks who could type 40 words per minute at least. Those too modest or miserly to sign up for brick-and-mortar classes could pick up a software program called Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing for 50. At my Catholic high school, the application was the typing class. The priests just switched on the computers.

Last year, Rachel Antell, an archival producer for documentary films, started noticing AI-generated images mixed in with authentic photos. There are always holes or limitations in an archive; in one case, film-makers got around a shortage of images for a barely photographed 19th-century woman by using AI to generate what looked like old photos. Which brought up the question: should they? And if they did, what sort of transparency is required? The capability and availability of generative AI – the type that can produce text, images and video – have changed so rapidly, and the conversations around it have been so fraught, that film-makers' ability to use it far outpaces any consensus on how.

Code streams across a computer screen; hackers bark at each other in techno-jargon and hammer at keyboards; the real world seamlessly shifts into the virtual, and back again. This is the sort of scene that is instantly recognisable as a cyberpunk film, the subgenre of sci-fi that meshes together technology and counterculture – of which Ghost in the Shell, the live-action remake of the Japanese anime classic, is the latest high-profile example. It is little surprise that cyberpunk has proved irresistible for many film-makers over the decades since the term was coined, by the author Bruce Bethke, in the early 1980s. With its visions of postapocalyptic futures, advanced technologies and virtual realms, they get to pack their films with visual effects to sweeten the (red) pill, while wrestling with weighty existential themes. Yet, for all its enduring popularity – which owes so much to Ridley Scott's 1982 classic Blade Runner – cyberpunk has often proved a tough nut to crack on the big screen.