AI Surprises in Cannes With More Curiosity, Less Fear
AI Surprises in Cannes With More Curiosity, Less Fear
https://www.thewrap.com/creative-content/movies/ai-filmmaking-cannes-film-festival-2026/
Publish Date: 2026-05-17 16:39:00
Source Domain: www.thewrap.com
CANNES – On the Members Club beach at the Cannes Film Festival, a passionate filmmaker is wearing a pin that reads “Fuck AI.”
But the filmmaker is Todd Mann, the co-founder of Flawless, and he’s here at the festival touting a new set of AI tools to help filmmakers and actors guarantee that their likeness isn’t used by technology without their consent.
“We need to come together on the right stuff and to fight the wrong stuff,” he said. “We can’t put our heads in the sand, we’ll get wiped out.”
Mann’s pin was a conversation starter for a festival that didn’t really need one when it came to artificial intelligence. Talk of the technology is everywhere, as are symposiums, panels and demonstrations around how to deploy it successfully, lashed to a debate over the limits and best uses on deck.
What’s clear is that the AI has turned a corner among some film professionals, from being the object of panic and hostility and existential threat to real curiosity over how the technology can be leveraged to make filmmaking more economically viable.
The conversation around “assistive AI” – tools that help with things like foreign language dubbing, matching images to dubbing or line changes and back office production – is where the focus is. These are efficiency tools that don’t particularly threaten copyright or creative output.
That stands in contrast to “generative AI” which is driven by the Large Language Models that scrape information from the broader universe and turn out the slop we all see (RIP Sora). Or “agentic AI,” which is the ability to solve problems by having AI write code itself. Those still feel like they will suck value from the legitimate work by creatives, or eliminate jobs now required by individual expertise.
Flawless co-founder Todd Mann wears a “Fuck AI” pin at the Cannes Film Festival (Photo by Sharon Waxman)
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