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Engadget
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Engadget Podcast: Ancestra director Eliza McNitt defends AI as a creative tool
Eliza McNitt is no stranger to new media. Her 2017 project, Fistful of Stars , was a fascinating look at stellar birth in virtual reality, while her follow-up Spheres explored black holes and the death of stars. Now with her short film Ancestra , McNitt has tapped into Google's AI tools to tell a deeply personal story. Working with Google Deepmind and director Darren Aronofsky's studio Primordial Soup, McNitt used a combination of live-action footage and AI-generated media to tell the story of her own traumatic birth. The result is an uncanny dramatic short where the genuine emotion of the live-action performance wrestles agains the artificiality of AI imagery. The film begins when the lead's (Audrey Corsa, playing McNitt's mother) routine natal care appointment turns into an emergency delivery. From that point on we hear her opine on how her child and all living things in the universe are connected — evoking the poetic nature of Terrence Malick's films. We jump between Corsa's performance, AI footage and macro- and micro-photography. In the end, Corsa holds a baby that was inserted by Google's AI, using prompts that make it look like McNitt as an infant. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. There's no escaping the looming shadow of Google's AI ambitions. This isn't just an art film — it's an attempt at legitimizing the use of AI tools through McNitt's voice. That remains a problem when Google's models, including Veo and other technology from DeepMind, have been trained on pre-existing content and copyrighted works. A prestigious short coming from Darren Aronofsky's production studio isn't enough to erase that original sin. "I was challenged to create an idea that could incorporate AI," McNitt said in an interview on the Engadget Podcast. "And so for me, I wanted to tell a really deeply personal story in a way that I had not been able to before... AI really offered this opportunity to access these worlds where a camera cannot go, from the cosmos to the inner world of being within the mother's womb." This embedded content is not available in your region. When it comes to justifying the use of AI tools, which at the moment can credibly be described as plagiaristic technology, McNitt says that's a decision every artist will have to make for themselves. In the case of Ancestra , she wanted to use AI to accomplish difficult work, like creating a computer generated infant that looked like her, based on photos taken by her father. She found that to be more ethical than bringing in a real newborn, and the results more convincing than a doll or something animated by a CG artist. "I felt the use of AI was really important for this story, and I think it's up to every artist to decide how they wanna use these tools and define that," she said. "That was something else for me in this project where I had to define a really strong boundary where I did not want actors to be AI actors, [they] had to be humans with a soul. I do not feel that an performance can be recreated by a machine. I do deeply and strongly believe that humanity can only be captured through human beings. And so I do think it's really important to have humans at the center of the stories." To that end, McNitt also worked with dozens of artists create the sound, imagery and AI media in Ancestra . There's a worry that AI video tools will let anyone plug in a few prompts and build projects out of low-effort footage, but McNitt says she closely collaborated with a team of DeepMind engineers who crafted prompts and sifted through the results to find the footage she was looking for. (We ran out of time before I could ask her about the environmental concerns from using generative AI, but at this point we know it requires a significant amount of electricity and water. That includes demands for training models as well as running them in cloud.) To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. "I do think, as [generative AI] evolves, it's the responsibility of companies to not be taking copyrighted materials and to respect artists and to set those boundaries, so that artists don't get taken advantage of," McNitt said, when asked about her thoughts on future AI models that compensate artists and aren't built on stolen copyrighted works. "I think that that's a really important part of our role as humans going forward. Because ultimately, These are human stories for other human beings. And so it's, you know, important that we are at the center of that." If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.
Mint
07-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
Google Deepmind CEO says he will pay ‘thousands of dollars' to get rid of THIS! Would you do the same?
Artificial intelligence pioneer and Google Deepmind CEO Demis Hassabis has said that he would pay 'thousands of dollars' to get rid of his daily emails as he gets too overwhelmed by them. Speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival on Monday, June 2, the Nobel laureate said his team at Google Deepmind is working on an AI-powered mechanism that will address this exact issue and take over the tedious task of managing email inboxes. 'I would love to get rid of my email. I would pay thousands of dollars per month to get rid of that,' Hassabis said. The new system will be aimed at helping users managing their email inboxes, sorting through mails automatically and replying to regular messages. The tool will also ensure that the important messages do not go unnoticed. 'The thing I really want – and we're working on – is can we have a next-generation email?,' Hassabis said. He revealed that the new AI tool by Google will not only manage and filter emails but also send replies that match the user's writing style. The tool is currently under development. Demis Hassabis also said on Monday that greater international cooperation around AI regulation was needed but "difficult" to achieve 'in today's geopolitical context'. At a time when AI is being integrated across all industries, its uses have raised major ethical questions, from the spread of misinformation to its impact on employment, or the loss of technological control. Speaking at the SXSW festival on Monday, Hassabis, who has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on AI, also addressed the challenges that artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- a technology that could match and even surpass human capability -- would bring. "The most important thing is it's got to be some form of international cooperation because the technology is across all borders. It's going to get applied to all countries," Hassabis said. "Many, many countries are involved in researching or building data centres or hosting these technologies. So I think for anything to be meaningful, there has to be some sort of international cooperation or collaboration and unfortunately that's looking quite difficult in today's geopolitical context," he said.
Time of India
03-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Google Deepmind CEO says global AI cooperation 'difficult'
Artificial intelligence pioneer and head of Google Deepmind's CEO Demis Hassabis on Monday said that greater international cooperation around AI regulation was needed but "difficult" to achieve "in today's geopolitical context".At a time when AI is being integrated across all industries, its uses have raised major ethical questions, from the spread of misinformation to its impact on employment, or the loss of technological London's South by Southwest (SXSW) festival on Monday, Hassabis, who has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on AI, also addressed the challenges that artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- a technology that could match and even surpass human capability -- would bring. "The most important thing is it's got to be some form of international cooperation because the technology is across all borders. It's going to get applied to all countries," Hassabis said. "Many, many countries are involved in researching or building data centres or hosting these technologies. So I think for anything to be meaningful, there has to be some sort of international cooperation or collaboration and unfortunately that's looking quite difficult in today's geopolitical context," he said. At Paris's AI summit in February, 58 countries -- including China, France, India, the European Union and the African Union Commission -- called for enhanced coordination on AI governance . But the US warned against "excessive regulation", with US Vice President JD Vance saying it could "kill a transformative sector". Alongside the US, the UK refused to sign the summit's appeal for an "open", "inclusive" and "ethical" AI. Hassabis on Monday advocated for the implementation of "smart, adaptable regulation" because "it needs to kind of adapt to where the technology ends up going and what the problems end up being".
Time of India
03-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Google Deepmind CEO says global AI cooperation 'difficult'
HighlightsDemis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, emphasized the need for greater international cooperation on artificial intelligence regulation, stating that achieving this is challenging in the current geopolitical environment. Hassabis highlighted ethical concerns surrounding artificial intelligence, including misinformation and employment impacts, while advocating for 'smart, adaptable regulation' that evolves with technological advancements. At a recent AI summit in Paris, 58 countries called for enhanced coordination on artificial intelligence governance, but the United States expressed concerns that excessive regulation could hinder the industry's growth. Artificial intelligence pioneer and head of Google Deepmind 's CEO Demis Hassabis on Monday said that greater international cooperation around AI regulation was needed but "difficult" to achieve "in today's geopolitical context". At a time when AI is being integrated across all industries, its uses have raised major ethical questions, from the spread of misinformation to its impact on employment, or the loss of technological control. At London's South by Southwest (SXSW) festival on Monday, Hassabis, who has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on AI, also addressed the challenges that artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- a technology that could match and even surpass human capability -- would bring. "The most important thing is it's got to be some form of international cooperation because the technology is across all borders. It's going to get applied to all countries," Hassabis said. "Many, many countries are involved in researching or building data centres or hosting these technologies. So I think for anything to be meaningful, there has to be some sort of international cooperation or collaboration and unfortunately that's looking quite difficult in today's geopolitical context," he said. At Paris's AI summit in February, 58 countries -- including China, France, India, the European Union and the African Union Commission -- called for enhanced coordination on AI governance . But the US warned against "excessive regulation", with US Vice President JD Vance saying it could "kill a transformative sector". Alongside the US, the UK refused to sign the summit's appeal for an "open", "inclusive" and "ethical" AI. Hassabis on Monday advocated for the implementation of "smart, adaptable regulation" because "it needs to kind of adapt to where the technology ends up going and what the problems end up being".
Time of India
03-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Google Deepmind CEO says global AI cooperation 'difficult'
Artificial intelligence pioneer and head of Google Deepmind's CEO Demis Hassabis on Monday said that greater international cooperation around AI regulation was needed but "difficult" to achieve "in today's geopolitical context".At a time when AI is being integrated across all industries, its uses have raised major ethical questions, from the spread of misinformation to its impact on employment, or the loss of technological control. At London's South by Southwest (SXSW) festival on Monday, Hassabis, who has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on AI, also addressed the challenges that artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- a technology that could match and even surpass human capability -- would bring. "The most important thing is it's got to be some form of international cooperation because the technology is across all borders. It's going to get applied to all countries," Hassabis said. "Many, many countries are involved in researching or building data centres or hosting these technologies. So I think for anything to be meaningful, there has to be some sort of international cooperation or collaboration and unfortunately that's looking quite difficult in today's geopolitical context," he said. At Paris's AI summit in February, 58 countries -- including China, France, India, the European Union and the African Union Commission -- called for enhanced coordination on AI governance . But the US warned against "excessive regulation", with US Vice President JD Vance saying it could "kill a transformative sector". Alongside the US, the UK refused to sign the summit's appeal for an "open", "inclusive" and "ethical" AI. Hassabis on Monday advocated for the implementation of "smart, adaptable regulation" because "it needs to kind of adapt to where the technology ends up going and what the problems end up being".
