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Backrooms director Kane Parsons has been firing shots at generative AI, saying that “creatively, I get no enjoyment from using these tools,” and wishing they would “disappear forever.”
Backrooms began as a viral creepypasta that was posted anonymously on 4chan in 2019, and revolved around a seemingly endless maze of yellowed corridors and rooms.
Kane Parsons – aka Kane Pixels – transformed the concept into eerie found footage-style videos that became a YouTube sensation in 2022, and even went some way to inspiring TV hit Severance.
Parsons then made a Backrooms feature film that is currently breaking records in cinemas, and while the writer-director mulls over his next project, it sounds like that won’t involve generative AI.
Backrooms director gets “no enjoyment” from using AI
YouTube: Kane Pixels
In an interview with The Australian, Kane Parsons doesn’t hold back about his disdain for the use of generative AI in filmmaking.
“I think I’m in the same boat as most well-adjusted people,” says Parsons. “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.”
Parsons admits that the technology could help with more laborious VFX tasks, but adds that “right now it’s difficult to discuss objectively because there’s so much at stake and so many genuinely harmful consequences already happening.”
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But Parsons adds that he sees a future in examining Artificial Intelligence through his work, saying, “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.
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“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.”
Backrooms is in cinemas now, and you can head here for our list of best horror movies ever. For more on the AI debate, check out controversies concerning AI creation Tilly Norwood, movies Megalopolis, Late Night With the Devil, and Thunderbolts, and TV shows True Detective and the One Piece anime.
