Welcome to Rendering, a Deadline column reporting at the intersection of AI and showbiz. Rendering examines how artificial intelligence is disrupting the entertainment industry, taking you inside key battlegrounds and spotlighting change makers wielding the technology for good and ill. Got a story about AI? Rendering wants to hear from you: jkanter@deadline.com.
Let’s face it, when it comes to watching AI video, many of us have double standards. We’re quite happy to mindlessly scroll through viral slop on our social feeds, but we go nuts if anyone tries to mainstream artificial intelligence into more traditional viewing realms. We love Disneyfied deepfakes of elephants rescuing tigers, but there’s a view that Coca-Cola should not, under any circumstances, put machine-generated critters in our holiday ads.
Darren Aronofsky fell victim to this dichotomy last week when his AI studio Primordial Soup partnered with Time to launch a “visionary” YouTube series about the Revolutionary War. On This Day… 1776 uses Google DeepMind models to recreate pivotal moments from the Revolution. The first two episodes, both under five minutes long, dramatize the raising of the Grand Union Flag on Prospect Hill and “America’s first meme” — Thomas Paine’s Common Sense pamphlet advocating independence from Great Britain.
A press notice was careful to signpost the human endeavour behind the series. On This Day… is “animated by artists” and voiced by SAG actors, with Below scribe Lucas Sussman leading the writers’ room. Aronofsky is the first name on the press release, but his official credit is executive producer, so the depth of his involvement is not totally clear. The series is slick when compared with other scrollable slop, but because Aronofsky’s name is above the door, On This Day… is being held to a higher standard.
The Whale director’s association immediately pushes it into a professional storytelling world, where it’s difficult for viewers to reconcile with the uncanny quality of the spectacle. YouTube critics were quick to point out gaffes, including a man with too many teeth, snow falling upwards, flames flickering outside of a lantern, and the name “AMEREED” instead of “America” stamped on Paine’s pamphlet.
“This is embarrassing for everybody involved,” concluded a more diplomatic viewer in a brutal comments section. The trailer alone has roughly 18,000 dislikes, compared with just 767 likes, meaning 96% of those who rated the video gave it a thumbs down. It’s a small sample, but weighted with the comments and sentiment among critics (culture writer Stuart Heritage called the show a “horror” in The Guardian), it feels meaningful when online discourse is so often so defined by division.
The “AMEREED” gaffe in ‘On This Day…’
What’s most striking about the response is the sense of betrayal about Aronofsky’s involvement. Commenters on YouTube and beyond (Darren should probably avoid searching his name on X/Twitter) have taken it as a personal affront. The mood could be summarized like this: How could a brilliant filmmaker, who has given the world spellbinding human stories like Black Swan, lower himself into an AI swamp?
Aronofsky has not commented on the series publicly, and my interview request is yet to be granted, so we do not know exactly how he would answer this question. His past comments are instructive, however. Primordial Soup‘s founding mantra is “make soup, not slop.” In an interview with Dazed last year, Aronofsky said his “grief” for AI’s disruption of filmmaking is superseded by his curiosity to experiment.
There’s a lot to be said for this. Deadline launched Rendering to spotlight AI innovation, as well as call out its misuse. The technology could ultimately change the way films and TV shows are made forever, and Aronofsky could end up being remembered as a pioneer, rather than a pariah, in the field. Nick St. Pierre, a prominent voice in generative video, said On This Day… was a “truly insane” (in a good way) example of what can be achieved when artists and AI combine.
But the backlash suggests On This Day… is still somewhat ahead of its time, and that viewers don’t want revered storytellers embracing artificial intelligence. It gives people the ick in a way that does not necessarily apply to AI filmmaking natives like The Dor Brothers, who we have previously spotlighted in Rendering. Coincidentally this week, The Dors dropped a trailer for Rorschach Killer, a film concept they are developing with backing from unnamed investors. Within 24 hours, 99% of those who rated the video gave it a like.
Aronofsky is a beguiling chronicler of the human experience, so it’s little wonder people find it discombobulating that his company has used text-prompted characters to recreate a seminal moment in history. Aronofsky has himself admitted that it’s too soon for AI to be used “full primetime” in a feature film. His YouTube series is testing these boundaries, but right now, it seems the world is not ready for auteur AI.
