Reflections on the monster in the mirror

Can you tell us more about how you created this extraordinary film? 

The production process was quite a journey – it took us several months to piece everything together, especially since we were working with evolving AI tools that felt like building a plane while trying to fly it!  

Working with generative AI can feel like playing a fruit machine. 

Creating Meme, Myself and A.I. was all about blending different mediums to reflect the complex relationship we have with technology. We combined live-action footage with synthetic visuals, synthetic audio, and traditional VFX to craft a mixed-media film that feels both familiar and uncanny. 

Any highs or lows during the making of the film? 

One of the highs was definitely seeing how the visuals came together to create that unsettling feeling we were aiming for. On the flip side, working with generative AI can feel like playing a fruit machine—we'd spend weeks fine-tuning something, only to discover that our workflow couldn't handle a random shot for no apparent reason. 

Fortunately, years of experience in pixel-fudging, meant we usually managed to get there in the end! 

In what way does the film complete the trilogy of films centred around AI? 

Meme, Myself and A.I. wraps up our trilogy by shifting the focus from AI itself to our relationship with it. We started with Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, which was entirely AI-generated, then blended the process with Synthetic Summer, and now we've come full circle by using AI as a tool under our guidance.

If a small number of powerful people continue to make AI in this imperfect image without self-reflection, we might just be setting ourselves up for unintended consequences.

This final film delves into how AI inherits our failings and essentially holds up a mirror to humanity. It's about confronting the 'monster in the mirror' – which, spoiler alert, is us. 

Would you say that your adventures in AI have resulted in the discovery of dark and creepy things?  

For sure, we aimed for something lighthearted but ended up tapping into the eerie and unsettling aspects of AI. I think it's both disturbing and exhilarating – disturbing because it exposes the darker sides of humanity that get reflected in AI and exhilarating because it opens up new avenues for storytelling.  

I wouldn't say I'm a doomer about AI but I do think it hasn't been approached with the necessary caution. The tagline for  Meme, Myself and AI  describes it as staring into the abyss and having it stare back, which kind of sums up my feelings on A.I.

Above and all images, still from Meme, Myself and AI.

Meme, Myself and I brilliantly skewers humanity’s arrogance and how it makes AI entities “in its own image.” Will this be mankind’s downfall? 

I wouldn't go as far as predicting mankind's downfall, but it's a cautionary tale. Our film aims to highlight how our flaws get baked into the AI we create. If a small number of powerful people continue to make AI in this imperfect image without self-reflection, we might just be setting ourselves up for unintended consequences. So maybe it's less about downfall and more about a wake-up call - I don’t think that we can bootstrap the human condition! 

We tend to attribute patterns, meanings, and personalities to things like cars or instruments because that's human nature, but fortunately, software doesn’t really lend itself to that! 

Can you outline the process of creating a script with GPT? 

Absolutely! Using GPT to create a script involves feeding it prompts and seeing what it generates. It's a bit like collaborating with a very unpredictable writing partner. You input ideas, themes, or specific lines, and then GPT generates text based on that. It's an iterative process – you keep refining the prompts and editing the output until you get something that feels right. It's fascinating and chaotic, but it can lead to surprisingly insightful results. 

However, Meme, Myself and A.I. was entirely written by me, which is a process I find painful but overall overwhelmingly more satisfying. Essentially, with all of these tools, I feel that if you don’t have a clear idea of what you want, then you’re not really making it; you’re just showcasing someone else's technology.

In Infinite Diversity, one of the bots muses on its identity asking, “If they replace my face with a dog’s face, will I still be me?” Having worked with AI tools and entities do you start to anthropomorphise them?  

While it's tempting to anthropomorphise AI – especially when you give it a face or a voice – it remains a tool, just like Premiere or Photoshop. We tend to attribute patterns, meanings, and personalities to things like cars or instruments because that's human nature, but fortunately, software doesn’t really lend itself to that! 

Flames and fire are themes throughout the films because I see this technology as akin to harnessing fire.

I think the line blurs when you create characters—as with any story, whether animated, filmed, or generated, you need them to feel real so you, or at least I, treat them as such. Our film features a wide range of characters, some entirely synthetic in both visuals and audio but they have all been brought to life by actual people, which is important to emphasise. 

I don't really understand why people say, "AI did this or that"; it's distancing yourself from your work. It's similar to saying the Alexa Mini or my paintbrush made this –and sure, technically true, but it's an inanimate object! It has no desires or ambitions – that's all on us!  

While using text prompts to create Synthetic Summer, you saw what was going wrong with some of the footage and "leaned into it to create a nice little arc of weirdness.” Do you relish the surreal weirdness that AI can generate? 

We all like it when things go wrong and betray perfection; it breaks the fourth wall and reminds us we're watching something constructed – it's why glitches are a perennial trope. With AI video, this glitching or morphing is particularly peculiar, as it's strangely more organic and akin to our subconscious, which makes it all the more mesmerising. I imagine it will stick around for a while. 

It's a playful fusion—we're not just talking about AI; we're actively engaging with it, letting the medium enhance the message.

Would you agree that parts 1 and 3 of the trilogy are satires on the way we live now? Are you motivated by reflecting on the folly of mankind’s destruction of our environment? 

That's fair. Actually, I think all of them are satires. I do find it compelling to explore our (and especially my) idiot nature through work. For me, It's less about focusing solely on environmental destruction and more about holding up a mirror to ourselves to spark conversation and a little self-reflection. Flames and fire are themes throughout the films because I see this technology as akin to harnessing fire. It's incredibly potent and has the potential to revolutionise much of our world, but the flip side is the very real danger of getting burnt. 

You suggested that the way the film has been made follows the function of the film. Can you expand on this? 

The way we created the film is integral to its message. Since we're exploring themes around AI and technology, it felt essential to use those very tools in the filmmaking process. It's a playful fusion—we're not just talking about AI; we're actively engaging with it, letting the medium enhance the message. Even the act of making the film is, at some level, transgressive – it's playing with matches. 

 AI has always tried to bridge the world between live-action and post, so this just seems like a logical step for us.