Cannes proved AI needs filmmakers more than filmmakers need AI

If there was one conclusion to come out of Cannes Lions this year, it was that AI had failed.

That might seem surprising given how dominant AI was throughout the festival. Around 40% of award entries disclosed using AI, double the proportion from the previous year, and Cannes itself introduced a new AI Craft subcategory to recognise work created at the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence.

Yet despite dominating the conversation, AI didn't define the work people left talking about. The campaigns that captured the industry's imagination weren't celebrated because they used AI; they were celebrated because they told great stories. AXA France's Three Words won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix because of the power of a simple human insight, while Heineken's The Pub That Refused to Die was recognised for turning a local community story into a national movement. Only two of the 34 Grand Prix were directly AI-related, reinforcing the feeling that while AI had become part of the creative process, it had not become the defining factor behind the industry's most celebrated work.

Across panels, conversations and late-night dinners, the industry arrived at a remarkably similar assessment. The technology had undoubtedly progressed. The work looked technically impressive, visually polished and often impossible to ignore, yet much of it still felt emotionally underwhelming. The conclusion many reached was simple: AI isn't there yet.

I think we've diagnosed the wrong problem.

AI didn't fail at Cannes because the technology isn't capable of enabling great work. It failed because we've spent the last two years confusing AI production with filmmaking. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that because production had changed, filmmaking had changed too.

It hasn't.

Over the past eighteen months, the industry has rushed to build AI production companies. Many have been founded by incredibly talented technologists, AI artists and designers who understand the tools exceptionally well. What many of them haven't been built around are filmmakers: directors, editors, cinematographers and production designers. People who have spent years learning how to tell stories, work with performance, create emotion and guide an audience through a film.

That's backwards.

Filmmaking has never been defined by the camera. Every generation has embraced new technology, from sound and colour to digital cameras, CGI and virtual production. The tools have always evolved. The craft hasn't.

Above: AXA France's Three Words, which won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix at Cannes Lions, showed the power of a simple human insight.

Great filmmaking has always been about making thousands of creative decisions: where to place the camera, when to cut, how long to hold a shot, how colour shapes emotion, how music changes meaning and how every frame contributes to the story being told. AI hasn't removed those decisions. If anything, it has made them more important than ever.

When almost anything becomes technically possible, taste becomes the differentiator. A model can generate hundreds of beautiful images, but it can't tell you which one belongs in your film. It can't decide whether a scene should breathe for another three seconds, whether a close-up carries more emotional weight than a wide shot, or whether the audience should feel hope or discomfort in a particular moment.

Those are filmmaking decisions, not technological ones.

Somewhere along the way, we've also started confusing prompting with directing.

They are not the same thing.

Prompting generates possibilities.

Directing makes creative decisions.

It's knowing what to keep, what to remove, what to change and, more importantly, why. The role of a director has never been to operate the camera. It's to shape every creative decision that ultimately makes an audience feel something. AI hasn't replaced that role. It has made it even more valuable.

The same misunderstanding exists when people talk about AI replacing creativity.

It won't.

And while this may be an unpopular opinion, ChatGPT is a terrible writer, but is a decent editor. I use ChatGPT every day. I use it to challenge ideas, tighten copy and improve structure. I don't use it to generate the original idea because that's simply not what it's good at. Great storytelling has never been built on statistical probability. It's built on originality, lived experience, curiosity and taste.

Ironically, that's exactly why I find AI so exciting.

Not because I believe it will replace filmmakers, but because I believe it removes barriers that filmmakers have spent decades fighting against.