When it comes to Hollywoods AI future, few have been more vocal or critical than Justine Bateman.

Armed with a computer science degree from UCLA,the veteran actor-filmmaker has sounded an alarm about the dangers of replacinghuman work with machine fabrication. She became a lead voice, particularly during the strikes, when she advised SAG-AFTRA on the issue and was often a public face of the AI-skeptic movement on the WGA picket line.

Bateman is the founder of Credo 23, a two-year-old organization that believes Generative AI will destroy the structure of the film business and has set as its goal making very human, very raw, very real films/series that respect the process of filmmaking. As Hollywood begins to cautiously dance withtext-to-video tools like OpenAIs Sora and as the company makes Miyazaki-esque images available (to no small furor),Bateman is renewing her call.TheFamily Tiesstar and Violet directorargues a movement is growing that it needs to grow to combat a drift to the synthetic. Organic material that is human both in creation and sensibility, she says, is the answer.

She calls this movement a drive toward the new a push to restore a humanity to filmmaking that she says has been lost since the algorithms began dictating content choices last decade and that she believes will be further torched by the shift to AI.

Her mission is a kind of human-driven populism were likely to see across a host of industries (she is close with Sean OBrien, leader of theInternational Brotherhood of Teamsters); Bateman is simply one of the people leading it in Hollywood. Several high-profile creators have also joined her effort, including Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner and noted cinematographer and The Handmaids Tale director Reed Morano.

To platform the movement, Bateman has founded the Credo 23 Film Festival a filmmaker-first, no-AI event in which movies can contain nothing machine-generated (visual effects are OK, as theyre driven by humans). She says she will give all profits from the festival to the filmmakers to help support them and fund their next film. Credo 23 is taking place this weekend atHollywoodAmerican Legion Post 43 just south of the Hollywood Bowl, showcasing about 30 shorts and features; they range from pieces like Ethan Krahns avant garde Meditation on a Room to Callie Carpinteris teen-dramaTribeca hitDirty Towel, as well as two Bateman-helmed features, Look and Feel,the latter starring David Duchovny and Rae Dawn Chong.The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Bateman before the festival.

Youve decided a film festival is a good way to get your message out. What do you hope it accomplishes?

The two goals of the festival are first, no AI, and second, all proceeds go to the filmmaker so they can make their next human film. What happened was this. I saw the studios were all in on AI and the streamers were all in on AI. But then the festivals went all in on AI and I thought, Wait a minute. The film festivals are where we saw Pulp Fiction, and Sorry to Bother You and sex, lies and videotapeand all this really original work. And now, how does that happen if festivals are all in on automated content? So I thought, Ill start my own festival.

Is there something broken about the festival model generally, do you think? Or are you just worried about a tech takeover?

I have a lot of gratitude for film festivals. There are so many people who spend an incredible amount of time and who work really hard to showcase great filmmakers. At the heart of all these film festivals, theres a true objective to champion great art.But what have I seen happen and perhaps its a result of money constraints, I really dont know their business is that they always had three categories of focus. Premieres of big films, cause-based films, and kickass innovative art like aPulp Fictionor asex, lies and videotape or a CronenbergCrash. But the first two of these categories have gotten incredibly large while the third has gotten really small. Films that were different and really hit you in the right spot have been sacrificed for the sake of the other two categories. Im not pointing fingers; I dont know what goes on behind the scenes financially. But I want to do it differently.

Theres also a feeling among some filmmakers that theres less benefit to going to a festival.

Well, people used to come to festivals to get distribution. But now its so hard to get a deal. So we said, What if filmmakers got paid by a festival the way artists do at Coachella?We dont have a ton of money but I kept the overhead low so that between sponsors [Kodak, The Teamsters,AI-safety nonprofit Fathom and others) and ticket sales and everything else, we were able to cover all our costs with 20 percent of revenue. The other 80 percent is going back to filmmakers so they can make their next film.

How does all this tie into your anti-AI stance?

So this is about how the business has changed long before AI when the tech companies came in and carpetbagged Hollywood. Theyve never been in the entertainment business. Theyre in the tech business, which is a different financial ecosystem. It used to be that every timeone viewer watched a film one time, they paid $15, and the filmmaker got some of that. Then it became $15, so awhole household and anyone they share their password with can watch 5,000 or 10,000 films. It became about subscribers and a totally different setup. And thats never going to benefit a filmmaker.

And you think this affected the quality too, the drive towards quantity.

The North Star was always excellent work. Sure, you had movies and TV shows that werent great. But everybody wanted to be connected to a really good project. Now with the whole new model, what you get is a conveyor belt of content. Of course there are exceptions. But the North Star is not excellent work its the conveyor belt.

How do you define that term?

Conveyor-belt content is the kind of film or TV series that can play in the background while you scroll mindlessly through Instagram. If you look away for 15 minutes and cant know whats going on when you look back they dont want that.I literally had a filmmaker friend who got a note from a streamer that said their film was not second-screen enough.The goal is to be cinematic Muzak. This is why a lot of people dont want to go to movie theaters anymore. A good theatrical movie is designed to make you pay attention every minute. And people are not conditioned for that. So you take this conveyor belt and then you throw in thefear of being boycotted because you dont have this type of box checked or that type of box checked, and oh man, the system its broken. Its done.

Which leads you to AI.

AI can automate that content. Its the next step. What I believe will happen is it will subsume the entertainment business because it helps the conveyor belt. They can now customize based on all the years of user history they have on you. For an upcharge, they can put your head on Luke Skywalkers body for a showing of Star Wars tonight. Or they know you like, whatever, panda documentaries and Hong Kong fight movies, and so they can combine it and make you a movie.

Reboots have been rampant for a while, but until now, studios have had to make the reboot by hand they had to go out and shoot a whole new movie.

Exactly. And now it will be automated.And people say, What about copyright? But of course whos talking copyright? This is like Kleenex, they make a movie and throw it out and make another tomorrow. Thats how a lot of tech companies see films now. Its just something you put on your website. And wouldnt that be better wouldnt that be cheaperif it can be automated? That cheaper really is the key. They really would rather have no actors on a set because theyd rather have no sets. Sets are expensive.

Do you think people will go for this? Many experts say customization will be a novelty or, maybe at best, a niche. But you think it will subsume the business?

Yes, because were not talking about film audiences from the 1970s. Were talking about people whove been conditioned on the conveyor belt of slop. Theyve also been awakened by social media and self-obsession. I think many people will be into it. Not cinephiles. But this will be new for a lot of people and theyll go for itbecause its really just one click further than what theyre used to. People are used to looking at TikTok or an Instagram filter. So whats an AI face?

What about the idea that AI is a tool that it can help filmmakers who dont otherwise have the budget to execute all the shots in their movie? Do you put any stock in that?

I dont believe it. Because if thats true, hundreds of films would have been impossible to get made before now. Humans always figured it out. That great shot at the beginning of Sunset Boulevardwhere youre looking up from the bottom of the pool past the body to the photographers. Thats such an imaginative shot. They used a mirror to get it. If they had AI, they would have resorted to that, and we would have been robbed of one of the great shots in cinema. Constraints are what make great art.

But asking directors to voluntarily impose constraints feels like a big lift, doesnt it?

Oh, Im not asking anybody not to use it. I just feel theyre cheating themselves if they use it instead of finding out what they can actually do; I just would never use it because Id be handicapping myself creatively. Using AI for a shot is a regurgitation of the past. Its a vomit of everything thats been ingested. And its theft. Come on. They say its a tool. What kind of tool needs to ingest 100 years of film and series or it cant function? Thats not a tool.

And you dont think theres a way to live peaceably with it. Movies that include AI and human performers. An industry, too, that makes room for both.

Anyone who thinks that I think doesnt understand greed and human nature. Theres a big bag of gold in the corner and you think these companies arent going to go and get it?

And just to be clear, you believe art is not possible here. That is, any AI image or video cant be new, let alone visionary.

For me, artists are tubes through which the universe, God, magic, whatever you want to call it, comes through to us. Throughout history, new genres of stories or new music comes through that tube, and it changes society. But that doesnt come through with AI; thats not a tube connected to that source. And the people using it are not artists. Look at what Tom Cruise does. Who doesnt love Tom Cruise? Look at every video of him, what he puts into Mission: Impossible. He does that for us.

Then you have Deepfake Tom Cruise.

Yes. No one drove a motorcycle off a cliff to make Deepfake Tom Cruise. There was no artist putting work into it, which is what matters to us, which we fell. And look, lets be honest, these tech companies arent going after the artists theyre going after the low-hanging fruit of all the people who wish they could be artists. It would be like if Boston Dynamics created an exo-skeleton that looked like Kobe Bryant and you could put it on and flop around the court and say, Look at all the jump shots Im making. You wouldnt be Kobe Bryant. And theyre not filmmakers.

What a bleak picture, if accurate.

See, but theres a new film business emerging. I dont fully know what it looks like yet but were going to get there. The films at our festival, thats what they do, theyre raw and real and there was no AI. Theyre not on the conveyor belt of slop. Theyre not automated.

So you want to slow down AI adoption in Hollywood while also building this idea of the new.

Oh no, I dont want to slow down anything at all. No one can slow it down. I want to give a book of matches to the studios, the streamers, OpenAI, Runway, everybody and just say, Go ahead and burn it down faster. Because the faster we get AI into the business, the faster well get to a new genre, which we really havent had since the 90s. So hurry up. So we can get to the new.

But if its so bad, shouldnt there be a push to fight it? Thats kind of what the strikes were about, no?

Both things can be true. I think Generative AI is one of the worst ideas society has ever had. But also, hurry up and get it over with so we can get to the other side. What I want to do in the meantime is build a tunnel. Were going to figure it out so that when all the AI stuff ends, something new and magnificent will be waiting on the other side. There will be filmmakers human artists working on it so that something great will be waiting. The idea of trying to save the tree doesnt make sense to me. The tree is already dead. The goal now is to plant a new tree.

Some optimism! So how do you see this playing out?

I think after a certain amount of time, people will start getting sick of these regurgitations. It might take a while. But they will. Theyll get sick of an AI telling them their medical procedure isnt covered or they cant go to this school or anything else where these automated things are making decisions about their lives. And theyll get sick of automated content too. What they will want is something real and raw and human and not AI.

And thats what the festival is, kind of a glimpse at what can be waiting?

Yes. Were building the tunnel and this is what we are working on so we can bring it out into the light on the other side. We have films that are, at the very least, leaning in a human direction, that resist a clich turn. But also films that point to something raw that a computer couldnt generate. Were trying to get to a future that isnt automated. I think its exciting and a lot of people will join us.

There are two roads. One is going right into the mountain.Fortunately, theres another road. Thats the road I think we should get on.