Filmmakers: 'Get in the Driver's Seat' on AI at Zurich — SkimNews
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- Nick Shumaker, producer of Alex Gibney's Musk, publicly called out AI companies for ingesting creators' content 'from a perspective of stealing,' citing New York Times and major media outlet lawsuits over fair use.
- Shumaker clarified that Gibney's Musk used minimal AI in production — the Elon Musk avatar was created by human CGI artists, with AI limited to post-production lip-syncing.
- Vania Schlogel, founder of Atwater Capital who joined AI creative platform Magnific (formerly Freepik) as Chief Strategy Officer this summer, said her engagement with AI was triggered by seeing a competitor's viral content featuring sexualized children's IP and racist depictions.
- Schlogel urged the creative industries to 'get in the driver's seat' of AI to shape its ethical direction, warning that the technology's confident tone already encourages 'cognitive surrender' in users with higher expertise than the LLMs they consult.
- Zack London is preparing the theatrical release of his fully AI-generated sci-fi anthology Gods Don't Give Gifts, saying the 'way too esoteric and niche' project 'would never get greenlit otherwise.'
- Nick Holt's documentary AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About — featuring Geoffrey Hinton, Demis Hassabis, and engineers from Anthropic and OpenAI — screened at the Zurich Film Festival alongside the summit.
Why it matters: Major creative-industry figures used the Zurich Summit stage to declare where they stand on AI: Shumaker publicly framed AI content ingestion as theft while his own Musk documentary used almost no AI — a contradiction the industry now has to reconcile. Meanwhile, London becomes one of the first theatrically released AI-native directors with Gods Don't Give Gifts.
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