Soderbergh used Meta's AI in his Lennon documentary. Critics hated it. He says that's the point.

"Approximately 10% of the film's visuals were generated using Meta's AI software. Soderbergh disclosed the partnership earlier this year and has been characteristically direct about the backlash that followed. " I knew what was coming," he told the Associated Press in Cannes on Saturday. " You don't say yes to Meta offering you these tools and offering to finish the film and not know you're going to come in for some heat. That was part of the deal. ""

"The AI-generated sections, which critics at Cannes overwhelmingly criticised, are abstract and surreal: circles of light, a black rose morphing into a choreographic pattern, paint colours mixing in split screen alongside lovers caressing. There are no deepfakes of Lennon. The sequences were created for passages where the conversation turns philosophical and no archival footage exists to illustrate the ideas being discussed."

"Soderbergh assembled more than 1,000 photographs and video clips from the archive to cover the rest of the film, editing them to the rhythm of the conversation in what reviewers have described as a hyperkinetic photo album. Soderbergh's framework for when AI is justified in filmmaking is simple: " It has to be necessary. Is it the only way to accomplish what I want to see? Is it truly the best way to do it? " He said the surreal seq"

A 97-minute documentary premiered at Cannes, built around a never-before-released two-hour-and-45-minute radio interview between John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded on December 8, 1980. Roughly 10% of the visuals were generated using Meta AI tools, with the filmmaker disclosing the partnership earlier and anticipating backlash. Critics largely criticized the AI-created segments as abstract and surreal, including light circles, morphing imagery, and color mixing in split screens. The film avoids deepfakes of Lennon and uses AI mainly where no archival footage exists to illustrate philosophical ideas. The rest of the documentary relies on more than 1,000 archival photographs and clips edited to match the interview’s rhythm.

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