New tools, diverse storytelling: Is AI democratising filmmaking?

Khaleej Times

3 days ago

"Dad, I know this looks real, but it's only AI. You don't have to wire money to anyone!' says a young, handcuffed woman, sitting in the centre of a dingy room. That video, and many others, made the rounds on social media shortly after the launch of VEO3. Google's new AI video generation model promised anyone with an access to a computer the ability to generate near-realistic videos from simple text prompts — and it kept its promise. What had been primarily a tool for filmmakers was suddenly available to everyone.
What if this tool lands in the wrong hands: those who will abuse it for purposes other than the art of audio-visual storytelling? And that, of course, is not the only 'downside' of AI in film.
Recently appointed Head of Luma AI's LA Studio, Verena Puhm has made significant waves in the field, trailblazing through a world of new opportunities in the art of audio-visual storytelling with AI. Puhm attended the AI Film Festival in Dubai, where she vowed the audience with her Sora Selects Film 2025 AI short film MILK. She also spoke frankly about the pros and cons, hinting at another shortcoming: IP and copyright infringements, anticipating what would occur a couple of months later, when Disney sued Midjourney for using Disney's IP.
In this context, Puhm broadens the discussion in our interview: 'There's a big responsibility also on creatives to just do the right thing. If you put in 'Batman is fighting Spider-Man' in Midjourney, you might get Batman and Spider-Man fighting. Is that the content that you want to create? Then you cannot sell it.'
One of the keywords that quickly crystalises from the interview is 'agency.' Puhm criticises some AI filmmakers for ripping off other artistes, for prompts like: 'in the style of Wes Anderson.' As James Cameron once pointed out, we're all models. We have been trained on movies, trained on stories, trained on the world's materials, but that doesn't give filmmakers permission to rip off other artists' work. Generally, it's not the intention of the AI toolmaker to encourage this, so it shouldn't be the intention of the creative using it, either.
For audio-visual filmmakers who are just starting out in AI, Puhm suggests that they educate themselves before going through the creative process, and to keep doing what any creative would have done before the existence of AI: to secure their rights and involvement. While AI toolmakers aren't taking anything away from the creative in the same way studios have done in the past, Puhm points out that if there's a concern with IP retention or copyright, then leave traces of human involvement in the creation. For example, manipulate the created image in Photoshop, make screenshots or screen recordings of the process, do anything to document interaction between human and machine.
While the use of AI was somewhat frowned upon at previous editions of the Cannes Film Festival — not just because the tools we have today hadn't been developed yet — Puhm noticed a change at this year's edition: AI was met with curiosity for the first time. 'If you're curious, you're not there yet where you're judging, and the biggest issue that I've seen in the past was that people are judging too fast. They judge based on fear or ignorance and no education.'
One of the greatest opportunities AI film-making has to offer any storyteller around the world is that it 'provides this new playground for filmmakers that have historically been left out of the narrative because they were either not locally in Hollywood… to tell a story, did not have personal ties to studios … and now they pitch their project and (it) would get made (even though) they did not have a story that would reflect what the mostly male, white-dominated studio heads would want to see.'
Instead of seeing it as a menace, AI can be a tool of connection between different cultures. 'It's an opportunity to under-represented voices to tell their story… all of a sudden, I can connect with someone from Zimbabwe that I never would have met. I would have never understood their cultural norms, beliefs, religion, anything that really makes me understand a different culture, and helps me expand my view on the world.'
As a creator and storyteller herself, Puhm sees AI more as an expansion of humanity's film-making capabilities; writers can verbalise what they want to see in an image, designers can use motion graphics, and add sound and audio without the necessary skills you needed before. With a long background in traditional film-making, Puhm recalls the moment she first brushed shoulders with AI as a film-making tool: 'I felt that I got my agency back. I did not have to rely on gatekeepers to green-light my projects.'
To Puhm, the biggest argument in favour of AI is democratisation: giving power back to the people, which is happening with the accessibility of film-making tools, and giving respect back to the artists, who 'historically have been very much exploited by the system... even though the creatives are the ones that are creating worlds; so with this new shift we can become storytellers on
any platform.' She concludes: 'That's what it's about … giving artists an opportunity, the respect they actually deserve and to shape how the future of storytelling can look like. Hopefully, it will
be broader than what we have experienced in
the past.'