He’s not a fan.
The youngest director to ever go #1 at the domestic box office, Kane Parsons, was reportedly asked his thoughts on generative AI in a new paywalled interview with The Australian, uncovered by Twitter user neemoahtoad and he’s largely against it, even calling out a lot of billboard content we see these days as ‘AI slop’:
“I think I’m in the same boat as most well-adjusted people. If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.”
He adds there may be practical uses for AI-assistance in tedious VFX labor:
“but right now it’s difficult to discuss objectively because there’s so much at stake and so many genuinely harmful consequences already happening.”
“What interests me more is interrogating it artistically. We already live in a world where you walk outside and there are billboards and signs that are obvious AI slop. That’s become part of our visual reality. To me, generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot. I’m interested in using that iconography in art – not using AI to make the art itself, but examining what it represents. I definitely want to explore it further in future projects.”
Parsons’ comments arrive the same week Martin Scorsese went viral for taking a very different approach to the technology. The legendary director is now a partner and advisor for a generative AI startup and has said he’s using AI during preproduction to help storyboard projects. ‘I’m interested in the intersection of technology and storytelling, and seeing how that can push the bounds of creativity to create deeper and richer experiences for audiences,’ Scorsese said, adding that ‘cinema is a young medium’ and filmmakers have to be open to how it can evolve. For critics of the technology, figures like Scorsese embracing AI could help normalize its use across Hollywood in ways that extend far beyond preproduction.
Parsons, however, represents a different perspective: a filmmaker who came up on YouTube and the internet by teaching himself Blender and VFX frame by frame, and who sees generative AI less as a creative breakthrough than something to interrogate artistically.
Parsons has allegedly used AI for some of his Youtube content, and addressed this on his Discord, drawing a line between AI as a broad category and generative tools being used to create core imagery. Responding to a user, he said he ‘wouldn’t use generative tools for primary visuals unless the fact of the visual being created in such a way is a component of the narrative’.
For Parsons, the next step may be going even deeper into the world that launched his career. He has said his priority is to tell more stories in the Backrooms universe, either through another film or an episodic series, while continuing to release YouTube projects. Deadline has also reported that a Backrooms sequel is already in the early works, with Parsons looking for a co-writer as the franchise begins to take shape beyond its internet origins.
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