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TLDR: I watched an AI film and it wasn't terrible. But I do have major concerns about ethics, consent, and tech companies' disregard for humans.

The Annecy International Animation Festival is seven jam-packed days of films, networking, conferences, and business.

It’s only day 4, and my brain is firing on all cylinders, thinking about all the business opportunities that came from MIFA in the last two days. It’s exhilarating and overwhelming.

But, if I’m totally honest, my brain is also a little preoccupied with another problem. I’ve just finished converting the Euro to Rand price of the mediocre flat white I finished 10 minutes ago and am wondering if the caffeine buzz to cost ratio is going to work out for me.

I’m doing this very complicated math in my head when the most ridiculous thing happens: a first-timer to Annecy asks me what the ‘booing’ is about.

Booing? No, they must be mistaken. There’s no booing at Annecy. There are paper airplanes thrown from the back of the cinema, yells of 'Lapin' every time a bunny appears, and cute little frog sounds. But booing? No. Not this audience.

I assure my new friend that there is no booing in Annecy but concede that ‘Lapin’ in rapid fire may sound like booing. However, someone interrupts my preachy monologue to assure me that yes, in fact, one of the short films was boo’ed yesterday.

We’ve gone from three people to at least six in a huddle. Someone else activates roaming on their phone just to search for this bit of headline news. What atrocity was committed in that cinema?

My mind immediately goes to politics. Possibly subject matter that a liberal arts audience took a stance against. Russia? Trump? Human rights?

“It was an AI-generated film!” Miss Moneybanks with all the data tells us.

Huh. Interesting. AI.

In an ever-increasingly visual world, I get why people use AI. A small business can create posts that improve their chances to stand out on Instagram. An artist that used to trawl the internet for days to photo bash a rough composition, can now type a few prompts to do the same thing.

I think AI, like the iPhone, is a very, very useful tool in the creative and entrepreneurial toolbox.

But what I don’t like about AI is what we’re all rallying against on every issue that the modern world is facing. And that is consent.

Consent is crucial in everything from reproductive rights, indigenous rights, political participation, labor rights, gender equality and now; digital rights.

I don’t trust Silicon Valley as far as I can throw them. I don’t think you should either. They clearly don’t care about humanity or our consent. They expect us to take whatever they give us and then be grateful to them.

After decades of experience it’s clear that disruption can quickly snowball into decimation.

What is odd to me is that I know there are artists who want to sell our tech bro brethren libraries of their work. Just like photographers do for stock libraries. The assumption that artists hate the technology is incorrect, we can all sense its usefulness - we’re just not not sure of the ethics (or the humans) underpinning it.

Also, to the team who made the AI film, I’m not angry with you. I thought it had a cool look and feel. It was weird and funny and made me feel like I’d taken shrooms. It was an 80’s fever dream that had acid colours and cool hairstyles. I especially liked the dog that turned into a drummer.

But similarly to chocolate and diamonds, I just wish I could relax and enjoy it. And not worry about how it might be destroying things I value most in this world.

This was the article that we found: Annecy head addresses AI booing controversy

And this is the film it refers to: YouTube link

And for those of you that think Adobe scraping our data is BS - we use Affinity Design at our studio.