IndieWire, Andreessen Horowitz Host Cannes AI Panel
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- IndieWire and Andreessen Horowitz's Cultural Leadership Fund co-hosted "Music, Film & the New Storytelling Stack — Co-Authoring What Comes Next" at The American Pavilion during Cannes, gathering filmmakers, tech founders, and investors to push past "with us or against us" AI debates.
- Krea founder Diego Rodriguez argued productive AI conversations are impossible because the word means different things — chatbots, TikTok, labor automation, or creative tools — and "we cannot even start having a conversation" until that's clarified.
- IndieWire's Chris O'Falt said current debates react to low-level gimmicky AI products; serious integrations a decade out will more closely resemble the CGI tools Hollywood has used for years.
- Masters vs. Machine CEO Roahn Hylton framed the debate as existential, warning that AI threatens art's traditional valuation through hard work, personal cost, and "what it means to be human."
- Cultural Leadership Fund partner Judene Smalls called the Hollywood-vs-Silicon-Valley framing a "false decision" and argued the industry's infancy makes it "ripe for all of us to participate" in infrastructure-building before capital concentrates.
- Promise Studios co-founder Dave Clark demonstrated AI-assisted work for a Coca-Cola ad and credited the tools with enabling his short film "Silent Valley," which earned him a meeting with Ridley Scott who said AI ultimately serves human storytelling.
Why it matters: Four panelists diagnosed AI-in-film debates as broken: the word means different things to different people, and early gimmicky products polarize audiences before serious CGI-comparable tools mature. Panelist Judene Smalls countered that the field's infancy makes it "ripe for all of us to participate" in infrastructure-building before capital consolidates in Silicon Valley — a window that closes once the same investment concentration that hit Hollywood before takes hold.
