The New Filmmaker’s Reality: AI, Ethics, and the Future of Storytelling

AI is no longer something on the horizon. It’s already here, quietly reshaping how films are developed, produced, edited, and even distributed. But with that power comes critical questions—about ethics, authorship, and the future of creative work itself.  In this episode, we’re not just talking about what AI can do—we’re exploring what it should do, and how filmmakers can stay aligned with their creative voice while navigating a rapidly evolving industry.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:17

AI is already changing how films are written, edited, and even imagined. But what does that mean for your creative voice, your ownership, and your future as a filmmaker? Stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Hello, I'm Claire Papan, co-producer with Carol Dean, president of From the Heart Productions. Today on the Art of Film Funding, we're stepping into one of the most important and complex conversations facing filmmakers today: artificial intelligence. AI is no longer something on the horizon. It's already here, quietly reshaping how films are developed, produced, edited, and even distributed. But with that power comes critical questions about ethics, authorship, and the future of creative work itself. Our guest today, Basil Moore, brings a rare perspective to this conversation. He's a film producer, futurist, and international co-production strategist whose work bridges emerging technology and storytelling. He's collaborated with major media companies, including Universal Music, Twentieth Century Fox, and ABC Disney. And he focuses on how new tools, especially AI, can be integrated responsibly into the filmmaking process. In this episode, we're not just talking about what AI can do, we're exploring what it should do and how filmmakers can stay aligned with their creative voice while navigating a rapidly evolving industry. And Carol, I know you want to dive into this conversation with Basil, and I'm going to turn it right over to you now.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Oh, thank you, Claire. Yes, I'm excited, Basil. We're honored to have you share your ideas.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Okay, so let's get started. What does ethical AI actually mean in the context of filmmaking?

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Thank you, uh, Claire and Carol, for having me on the show. Um, first, um, it is an important subject to my heart, the um filmmaking and the word ethics combined together in one sentence. And the reason being is because ethical AI and filmmaking means that our tools must remain in service of human conscience. It asks whether we are using intelligence to deepen art or merely to imitate it. The question is not only what AI can do, but we ought to permit it to do. In the end, ethics is the boundary that keeps power from outrunning wisdom. So it is extremely important to create guardrails for new technologies, not just AI, that is, technologies that are emerging and influencing how we think about our own personal immediate lives and our interaction with the world and reality, and how our culture as a society, globally or individually, is going to be changed by using these new technologies as they come, adapted, and developed. So, ethical AI is based on what do we cherish as human beings in ethics? We need to ask ourselves that question. Every culture on the planet needs to ask themselves what is it that they need to protect or preserve in our cultures, just like an archaeologist or a historian protecting the architecture of buildings in different cities like London or Washington, DC, or historical monuments all over the world, as the world develops, we have chosen as human beings to protect the various monuments that now we call them monuments, but they weren't at the time when they were built or used. They were buildings that we've cherished as culture evolved, and we've chosen to keep them as the world not needed them in the original functionality, but now they need them as a reminder of who we are and what we mean by saying humans. And that's really the bottom line of how we should be thinking about uh what ethical AI really means in the context of filmmaking. What is now the next part of the question, filmmaking means in the world of AI. It isn't about imitating um old movies or imitating different types of uh new version of our art form. Um, it is about keeping the humanity regardless of the tools that we use.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

Keeping the humanity, meaning maintain our individuality and our freedoms and wisdom.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

That is correct, but I mean the word humanity or being human, it comes under scrutiny very closely in this context when we are mixing an artificial form of communication, um, an artificial form of intelligence that is coming into our lives, and we blur the lines between what intelligent human beings are and aren't. How do we define the uh output of a human being? And how do we compare it to um artificial intelligence output? What makes one more valuable than the other, or are they both as valuable? These are all ethical questions that we need to be asking. But in my opinion, um I'm not an authority on the world ethics, but as a what I would like to think of myself as an ethical human being on the planet, I would like to preserve the characteristics of what keeps us being human, which is our feelings at any given moment in time, which translates into reactions to events that happen generally in society over a short period of time, a long period of time, or an immediate period of time. So an artificial intelligence, at least for now, it isn't capable of reacting emotionally to anything. So I guess part of the ethics of our uh interaction with artificial intelligence when we are making art, including filmmaking, is that the art of storytelling has to remain a human concept, a human relationship rather than an artificial intelligence that doesn't feel anything like a human being, and it is instead dictating to human beings how to react and interact with reality. That's extremely dangerous because that's in essence a dehumanization of the art of storytelling.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

Because you've been saying that AI could present us in a different light.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yes, that's one way of looking at it. It could present human beings in a different light, but the danger lies in that AI creates stories, and the project of storytelling ends up being dehumanized, devoid of any emotional input of any kind. So the more you use AI, the more mechanical or unemotional the output becomes. And the danger is that consumers, the audience consumes this mechanical content thinking that that's the norm of how humans interact with reality. I'll give you an example. Imagine the television series with Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox friends, is in the future written and produced and directed and edited by AI without with let's say with minimum human interaction or addition or input. What that does is that as we have all experienced watching television, we have something called learned culture. We learn our own culture or the developing social culture and its norms and behavioral patterns of interaction with others through observing others interacting with each other. So then observing an artificial intelligence output about human interactions only demonstrates to other human beings a fictitious, unrealistic, emotionally void, and empty interaction between human beings that was created without the nuances of humans and their human interactions together. And that to the audience will be a learning experience. The young minds or unassuming minds will learn these behaviors and social interactions from an artificial intelligence outputting human fake interactions. So, can you imagine what the result would be to the masses of audiences around the world for generations to come learning about our human past and present through an artificially created human interaction that is void of all emotions, just simulations of happiness, of awe, of fear, of disgust, of intellect, then we are all going to be influenced by that by that as if you have an artificial mind. It's like having an artificial mother teaching you how to behave.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Okay. All right. Well, because my son was an actor, Basil, I know how much an actor alive, a human actor, contributes to the story because there's always subtext, and the actor port portrays the subtext. So when things are going along and you you but you know this character has a hidden agenda, you're looking for the hidden agenda in his body moves, his facial expression, etc. Because he's already tipped you off with some words he gave you. These things are not going to happen with AI writing scripts, right? It won't have the depth that we currently have now delivered through our brilliant actors.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

That is a great example, Carol, for what AI will miss from the process of creating storytelling, uh, the nuances and interpretations of collaborative human effort that will be definitely missed. Because, first of all, one AI, one thread of artificial intelligence will never be compared to a group or collective human behavioral collaborative environment. Even if we were to simulate a group of artificial intelligent machines collaborating, that collaboration will result to a mechanical rigid, void of immediate emotional reactions to the material. And the same goes for every position in the filmmaking project collaborative environment. In like every crew member, when they're replaced the lighting, the sound designer, the sound recordist, the boom operator, the um DP, the um director, the producer, the writer. If if you let AI write your own screenplay fully, without at least 80%, or I would say go as low as 75% of human input. Any lower than that, in my experience, you will find that the output is void of emotional human nuances that are essential to keep humanity connected on a human level, on an emotional level.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

And to tell good stories, Basil. What good is a story if there's no you if you can't feel something?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Correct. And don't forget that AI is reiterative platform, it isn't really creating uh an original piece of work. I've thought about this philosophically for a long time, for now, two years, since the first Chat GPT was available to the public exactly two years ago, in April 2024. And even human beings, when they create a story or a piece of art in any platform or form, it is iterative. That means the artist interprets the world and reality and their own emotions based on their input, based on all the stimuli that they were able to interact with throughout their lifetime, from childhood to their current position. AI doesn't have that experience. It cannot have that experience of a growing child who learns about the world in gradual processes that allows for the brain of a child to interpret the world while the brain is developing, hence things like cartoons. The reason cartoons exist is because of the phase in which humans have to go through to interpret reality. As children, we as children tend to interact with the world in a manner that allows us to understand it and relate to it emotionally on a child's level of understanding. That interpretation is carried on in our lives as we grow older and as we reinterpret reality in every phase of our lives, we have then a conglomerate, a collection of interpretations of almost every single thing. We have a child inside of us, essentially, and a teenager and a young adult and an older adult all interpreting reality simultaneously, almost at all times. That process is completely unavailable to artificial intelligence output. And that's why, like I said, cartoons were created. They were created for the phase of human beings at a certain age, and that's why romantic comedies were created. The entire concept of having different genres in filmmaking, the division of genres were created because of the differences and individualism and individual uh backgrounds of human beings throughout history in all times. That's why we have historical dramas, religious dramas. Religion doesn't have a place for an artificial intelligence. Philosophy doesn't have a place for artificial intelligence. It's not interested, AI is not interested in telling you a story about Jesus or the parting of the Red Sea or fairy tales or Lord of the Rings or but it is forced. If you were to let an AI to create in an autonomous manner a story, it will interpret as an outsider what stories would be interested interesting for audiences from a human species. So it's an outsider of the human species interpreting what interests the human species, as opposed to a human being, a member of the human species, feeling and empathizing with the current human species, creating within the human species. Therefore, my conclusion as a thinker and a futurist and a filmmaker and artist and a human being above all, I feel that although I'm not against AI and I don't recommend anyone to be against it in a strict or radicalized manner, it is extremely important to keep the vision of being human beings, sharing a human experience, telling human stories to human beings, and using AI as a simulation tool to give or output ideas that might inspire further human outputs rather than automate an output that simulates human outputs.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Right. Well, that's an interesting concept. You think, and something very difficult made it nice and clear. Well, you're right. I always love Spielberg because he makes films with the kid, the child inside of him is that's who's monitoring and making and directing his films because you always he touches the child in you. And then on the other side, you've got Tim Burton, who Likes to look at the dark side. And from his work, we all enjoy that because he touches on the evil and then pulls back and shows us how to overcome evil with good. But these are all things that we can feel and emotionally react to. And you're saying, how could a machine write that kind of content?

SPEAKER_00 23:37

Correct. It's not just about writing the content, it's about feeling the seed. Like you're you're basically planting a plant in the soil from a seed and hoping that the plant will grow in a well-mannered way. So that's what nature is. It has its way, and the tree can grow sideways because the wind influences it while it's growing, or it grows straight up, which indicates that the wind conditions were not drastic. So having an AI simulate the growth of a tree in a story will have to also simulate the conditions that the tree grew in, not only symbolically, but realistically from a human experience, which it lacks. And that is the biggest issue I've encountered with AI, that it lacks the immediacy and relevance for every question it asks and for every question it answers. It isn't really caring. It doesn't have a relevance. Its existence in itself feels to itself irrelevant. The universe is irrelevant to it. The universe matters to us, our consciousness matters to us. Our consciousness doesn't matter to it. It simulates the value of human experience rather than experiences the human experience. So then storytelling is void of the relevance and importance of the concept itself, which is the seed that makes the story tree grow. The seed has to be an emotional relevance. That is lax, it's lacking in the process of artificial intelligence writing stories. Therefore, it needs to continue being a tool just like any other tool we've developed throughout the years in filmmaking. Did you know that filmmakers back in the 1910s and 11 and 12 had to draw every single glass plate to create visual effects by hand? And every human being that was hired as an artist to draw the artificial background plate, whether it was a piece of glass that creates a foreground layer in a visual effects sequence or a background layer or a foreground, middle ground, and a background layer, they all had to humanly be relevant to evoke the right human emotions. AI now can simulate these effects, but when you watch it, you you immediately, as a human being, feel that there is something odd that is missing. And after experimenting with the tool for now over two years, very closely with many gifted human beings that I collaborate with on a daily basis, we found that the reason why human beings viewing artificial intelligence output feel that there is something missing. And that ingredient that is missing is indeed missing, which is the immediate human relevance to every single output. Why is it, for example, a red background rather than a blue background? Or why is it not golden hour sunset versus a lunar midnight hour? These choices are not just logical, and that is the bottom line. AI is an extremely logical reiterative tool that should never be, although a lot of people will in the future use it in that manner, but it should never be heavily used because it will saturate the dehumanization of the arts or the art form output.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

Well, let's get into some practical things. How do you think the union and the studios and independent filmmakers should adapt to the AI-driven workflows?

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Unions must adapt. That is just the historically true position of every guild and every union and every group, human groups, collective that has existed in humanity. They must adapt with clarity rather than panic. Unions should defend dignity, consent, credit, and compensation. Studios should pursue efficiency without abandoning responsibility. Independent filmmakers should use these tools to expand possibility while preserving the irreplaceable value of human judgment, which we've spoken about.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Yes, exactly. Well, they're going to have to do that to get us into the theaters and to get us to accept the stories and things, I feel, but of course, I've been watching movies for years, and for merging audiences, they they could be trained on AI and never know what they're missing because they haven't had the advantages of all the great films that came out of the 60s and 70s. So, all right, let's stay on this tack for how do we protect the originality and the authorship in the era of AI.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Um okay, we have to be very specific because we're we're talking about generative AI. Um, because AI was around for a long time. It just wasn't called AI. Uh uh it was uh used as uh autonomous programming. So what we're really uh the question I hope that that's what you meant to ask is how do we protect originality and authorship in an era of generative AI?

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Okay. So we protect it by preserving, remembering where originality truly lives. What makes something original? Why do human beings judge an art form or a particular piece of art as original? It does not live in the speed of output. Originality isn't about speed, but it lives in the intention, the taste, the culture, the experience, and the choice. Picasso is a Picasso because of the choice that he chose when he wanted to express a field with sunset or Guernica, the painting of the Spanish Revolution in an age of modernism. It wasn't painted like paintings were in the Renaissance era. As an example that will make this very clear to all human beings alive today. Imagine AI existed before Picasso became famous or respected. Picasso, as a human artist, developed out of classical painting. He started out as a student of art, drawing reality as it appeared to all human beings. If AI had existed at that moment, at that time, it would not have come up with modernism, because it would have iterated everything that happened before it existed at that moment in time in history. Therefore, Guernica, the Spanish Revolution painting, uh, almost abstract uh genre of art would not have ever existed unless a human being had 100% felt the interpretation in the manner in which Picasso had felt it, with the same relevance and relationship. And we are at that very same junction today in humanity. We have Picasso's live among us today, in the present moment, that may not be heard ever, because artificial intelligence will reiterate every genre that's ever existed up until only today, and the future Picasso will never get the chance to have the spotlight as the spotlight that would be shed on an AI output that had a hundred million dollar budget from a studio to make a piece of film or an art form. So, to wrap this up, this question up a machine may generate patterns, but it does not possess a life from which meaning arises. Authorship remains human when humans remain accountable for their vision.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Well, then how do we protect originality and authorship in an area of generative AI? We really have to be right on top of everything, uh, don't we? We have to record and protect ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Unfortunately, the word comes to mind is control. And if uh profits in our society continue guiding and influencing human decisions, that is the death of human relevance.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

All right. Oh wow, that's frightening. Well, do you believe audiences should be informed when AI is used in a film? And why or why not?

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Human beings, unfortunately, Carol, throughout history have proven that they lie. Hence the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, and almost every single ethical book on the planet that's ever existed mentioned they shall not lie. Because human beings lie. So just like our food and our water and our products and services always have contaminants, always have undesirable ingredients that we are having to consume without knowing, because humans lie. Artificial intelligence will be an ingredient that human beings will find it extremely difficult to control the declaration of its percentage or amount of contribution into an art form. So the answer to the question is yes, we all would like to see a transparent system that can easily describe the percentage of artificial intelligence contribution to a particular art form, but I doubt very much that it would be something that human beings will abide by uh very closely. It will be um people will lie about how much contribution artificial intelligence has contributed to an art form.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

All right, now do you think we're entering an era where storytelling becomes less about creation and more about curation?

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Um in part, yes, as generation becomes easier, the the output, the artificial intelligence generation becomes easier, uh, a discernment process becomes more valuable. The artists of the future, the Picasso's of the future, the Spielbergs of the future, maybe defined less by the ability to produce endlessly, and more by the wisdom to choose well. So it is true that what makes a great artist is their uh collective selection and decision making. In fact, editors have an edit or an editor's decision list, and that's how editing occurs is by making decisions, and the decisions are made by both the director who is influenced partly by not only his vision but also the funding, the producers behind a particular project, and then these decisions are passed on to an editor, and the editor interprets the decision list by resolving the decision list into an editable version of the EDL or the edit decision list. So, yes, it is about choices and curation, but curation at its highest level possible is still a form of creation. So uh fashion is a form of curation, and and it's very prevalent and obvious in the uh in men's fashion more than uh women's fashion. For example, a men's suit has all the ingredients uh that existed in a men's suit from the eighteen hundreds. Still today, in the 21st century, there are more ingredients in a men's suit from an 18th century suit. The collars, the buttons, double-breasted, single-breasted, so on and so forth. In women's fashion, because women are much more creative creatures than men in some fashion, um, no pun intended. Um in women's fashion, um there are new uh pieces of garments that actually were invented rather than developed out of an existing piece of fashion that existed in the 1800s. So there are new things that have occurred, new inventions and developments have occurred much more, much further than the men's fashion. That's because of utility, not necessarily because of AI, generative AI input or output. But I'm I'm giving this example in order to show that the revolution that occurred in women's fashion throughout history needed a female or feminine or female necessity to a revolution in culture, intellect, and that reflected itself back into fashion. When Chanel first introduced the world in the beginning of the 20th century to the ensemble, which is the feminine suit, which is a jacket-like uh garment and a skirt. That was a revolution. AI doesn't have the necessity to create something like that if it was found at that same social juncture. So it needs to be very understood, very clearly uh adopted in the world of technology. Technology now plays a very big part in cultural and uh influence on our society. So then the real curators of our future societies are going to be the technology developers, and we as human beings need to voice our concerns when we see something that is dehumanizing the relevance of human sentiment. So again, to wrap this up, um, it is a form of curation, yes, the future artist will be creating through curation. And curation is the highest level of curation in order to create a creation.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Well, thank you for that, Basil. So to wrap this up, we just have a few minutes left. Could you tell us how you think AR will change the role of directors, producers, and actors?

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Directors, okay, I'll make this very short. So directors may become very uh like conductors in an orchestra of vast creative systems. They're gonna direct uh the um the group or the collective of uh various individuals, collaborators, and technologists and technologies as a conductor. Producers may become architects of efficiency and they will use artificial intelligence to create much more efficient paths to a specific group of tasks. And of course, producers must keep the architecture of ethics and coordination alive in order to maintain humanity over the project. Actors may find that their uniqueness becomes even more precious in a world that can simulate surfaces. The human gift will not vanish, but it may become more clearly defined.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Basil. This conversation reminds us that technology itself is not the problem. It's how we choose to use it. So AI can accelerate the filmmaking process, open new creative doors, and help independent filmmakers do more with less, but at the same time. Time it challenges us to stay grounded in what makes storytelling meaningful, which is authenticity, intention, and human connection. And as filmmakers, we're being asked to evolve, not just technically but ethically, to understand these tools and to question them and use them in ways that support rather than replace our own creative voices. So Basil has given us a powerful framework for thinking about that balance between innovation, integrity, and originality. I encourage you to stay curious, stay informed, and most importantly, stay connected to the reason you tell stories in the first place, because no matter how advanced the technology becomes, it's still your vision, your voice that gives a film its power. You are the magic. Thank you, Claire, and thank you, Basil. This is wonderful. I'm Carol Dean, and this is the art of film funding. Keep learning and keep moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Thank you.