Requiem for a Filmmaker: Darren Aronofsky’s Artificial Intelligence Revolutionary War Series Horror | Darren Aronofsky

IIf you find yourself stumbling upon Time Magazine’s YouTube account – perhaps because you’re a time traveler from the 1970s and haven’t quite understood how the present works yet – you’ll be presented with something that many believe represents the cutting edge of entertainment as we know it.

On This Day… 1776 is a series of short videos depicting the American Revolutionary War. What makes On This Day notable is that it was produced by Darren Aronofsky’s Primordial Soup studio. What also makes it interesting is that it was created using artificial intelligence. The third thing that makes it interesting is that it’s terrible.

The first episode, which is three and a half minutes long, sees George Washington raising a new flag over Prospect Hill, in defiance of King George III. It is the moment, according to the video’s description, “when rebellion turns into determination.” And if this collection of ChatGPT-looking logos scares the life out of you, wait until you actually see the thing.

It is, as you might expect, as ugly as sin. It’s the kind of thing that looks like it was intended to be photorealistic, but then either fell apart or exploded along the way. In the first shot, King George’s hair looks like someone melted and hardened a plastic badger. This is unfortunate because, like a lot of generative AI today, much of the episode consists of shots in which we see the characters from behind. This is, after all, because the back of an AI-generated head is less likely to send people into screaming fits of shock than an AI-generated face, and Aronofsky is a humanist.

Because, sir, faces. Because the Revolutionary War was started largely by old men, “On This Day” is full of the wrinkled faces of many well-known characters. And it’s really unsettling to see, not just because they all have the weird dead eyes of people ripped from The Polar Express, but because the wrinkles keep changing in color and depth.

It’s an effect that makes it look like the characters are drawn on several sheets of tissue paper that no one can line up correctly. Benjamin Franklin, who appeared during the second episode, was feeling particularly nightmarish. It looks as if someone genetically linked Hugh Laurie with Anthony Hopkins, then covered the resulting monstrosity with a thin layer of roving liver spots. I’m overselling the point here, but it’s pretty scary to watch.

On This Day has already made headlines for being somewhat of a draw, since all the voices are performed by human actors, who presumably need to feed their families more than they want to protect their careers from being wiped out. And that’s telling, because these sounds are by far the most compelling part of On This Day, especially when deployed in voiceover, because you won’t be distracted by the way their mouth movement doesn’t exactly match the noise they’re making.

But the day will surely come when they will no longer be needed. As terrible as it is, On This Day is actually better than a lot of other AI-generated output. Granted, the whole thing still feels like a warped cross between an animated sex toy convention and those old Taiwanese news cartoons, but compare a character here with Tilly Norwood, and you can see that real progress has been made in a frighteningly short space of time. We will soon have perfect AI creations with completely convincing human voices. After that, it won’t be long before content like On This Day is created entirely — written, acted, directed and edited — by claim alone. When that happens, Aronofsky can congratulate himself for quitting his job.

It will be interesting to see how the human film industry reacts to This Day, especially from the other actors. We’ve already seen, in Tilly Norwood, that these creations appear to be modeled on human faces, and that’s even more the case here. In particular, Thomas Paine’s portrayal seems to flash through the faces of any number of well-known actors. The main character appears to be Ralph Fiennes, but there are also glimpses of Daniel Day-Lewis and Matthew Macfadyen.

Less than two years ago, Scarlett Johansson hired legal counsel after noticing that an OpenAI app had a voice “eerily similar” to her own. In a climate like this, it’s not far-fetched to imagine that actors would start doing the same thing if they recognized their resemblance to an AI-generated artist.

But that’s a concern for another time. What matters now is that on a day like this… 1776 it is truly horrific to watch, and everyone involved should be ashamed. It’s by far the most disturbing thing Aronofsky has ever made, and I watched the last eight minutes of Requiem for a Dream.