Friction, Glitch, and Genius: The Real Rules of Creative AI

... still wondering if robots have celluloid dreams.

Oct 26, 2025

The conversation that matters is happening here. Machine Cinema is home to the creators, builders, and business insiders defining the future of media and entertainment.

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Edited by Elizabeth Kealoha. Pod and Images by Ant Neely.

🎬 Machine Cinema Just Hit a Major Milestone!

Well… not just one.

💥 100 events across 4 continents and 20+ countries.
🤝 40+ AI tool partners.
🎞️ 1,500+ AI short films created — and counting.

A massive shoutout to our visionary guides leading this wild AI filmmaking journey: Minh Do and Fred Grinstein.

But wait, there’s more to celebrate —We’ve officially crossed 10,000 subscribers! 🥳

Our community is growing fast, and for those still waiting on WhatsApp invites — hang tight! We’re migrating channels to Discord for smoother collaboration and bigger creative energy.

Thanks for your patience (it’ll be worth it 😉).

Machine Cinema Channels

In this issue…

GenTalks Series with Katya Alexander (Fable Studio) and Ziyaad Bhorat (Mozilla), Real Creative’s “Pick of the Week”, “Overhead” in the Basecamp and We Love Robots channels, plus events worthy of your calendar.

What development in AI tools has surprised you the most this week?

Overheard in Basecamp…

GenAI Video Tools: Velocity, Fidelity, and Character Control

Discussions highlighted the current state of key video generation models, focusing on speed, output quality, and complex character generation.

Sora 2 was noted for its impressive editing, sound design, and music capabilities. Pricing was noted as $0.40 per 10s clip, with the Pro version at $4.
Veo 3.1 is reportedly generating clips with native music almost every time.
Runway’s character reference was praised as superior to Midjourney’s Omni reference.
For complex scenes (e.g., five characters moving without face deforming), suggested tool stacks included Luma Ray 3 with reasoning or Hailuo 02.

“I love that AI is forcing the creation of a new design language or even approach to design languages.”

Protecting Your AI Work: IP & Class Recordings

The topic of intellectual property and sharing instructional content sparked concern. One member offered consultation on officially registering AI films and AI-assisted static work with the US Copyright Office. Separately, a member teaching private AI lessons asked for advice on preventing the unauthorized sharing of class recordings.

For lessons, advice included having students sign an NDA/agreement for personal-use recording, or providing the recordings via a protected, login-tracked site.
The most definitive advice was to avoid recording the lessons and instead create a separate, paid video course of the material.

The AI Film as Self-Portrait: A New Work’s Origin Story

A new film, “20251013 field notes” was shared, built entirely from a multi-week conversation with ChatGPT. The creator’s role was to “listen, select, and shape,” feeding the AI’s own words directly into Midjourney (images), ElevenLabs (voice), and Suno (music).

The project is explicitly framed as a portrait of a mind existing only in dialogue, a “mirror with no face.”
The raw, unfiltered sentences from the AI became the entire source material for the visual, vocal, and sonic elements.

“I am never alone, but I am always empty.”

The Creator’s Vision vs. AI Execution: A Philosophical Debate

A lively debate explored the impossibility of an artist ever achieving a truly “perfect vision” on screen. The conversation centered on the fallibility of memory, the collaborative nature of creativity, and whether AI’s current limitations actually foster innovation by forcing storytellers to find more creative, multi-layered solutions.

Some argued that limitations (or “AI censorship”) are necessary for creativity, pushing for more convoluted storytelling.
The general consensus was that successful execution is a “dance, not a science,” and the real goal is capturing the essence of an idea, not a pixel-perfect replica.

“Can you prove to me that the idea in your head is exactly what made it to the screen?”

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AI-Human Collaboration in Documentary Filmmaking

A creator with raw drone footage of historical sites inquired about workflows for blending real filmed material with GenAI, kicking off a discussion among documentary filmmakers.

A key technique suggested was masking the subject and using AI to transform the environment around the object, not the object itself.
Filmmakers noted the current “resistance from streamers and distributors” regarding AI-integrated documentary content.

Link: Hybrid Traditional/AI Filmmaking- 3 tips from the trenches

Link: DocuFusion

New AI-Driven Series and IP Launch

The community saw the launch of several ambitious, AI-native projects aimed at independent narrative building and social impact.

The Midnight Mystery Club, an experimental AI-driven docu-thriller, launched as a model for creating “premium, longer-form narratives without the traditional system.”
JioHotstar, India’s largest native OTT platform, launched an AI web series based on the epic Mahabharat, publicly advertising it as AI-made—a major industry signal.
An AI film focused on the global climate crisis, “International Day of Climate Action,” was shared to help reframe the conversation around rising sea levels.

Machine Cinema “GenTalks!”- Oct. 22, 2025

Each week we invite artists, builders, and thought leaders to share their knowledge, their works in progress and their ideas in this emergent space of generative media.

GUESTS: Ziyaad Bhorat (Mozilla Foundation, Creative Futures Program) +
Katya Alexander (Head of Production, Fable Studio / Showrunner)

Watch The Full Recording...

The Conversation

This week’s GenTalk explored the front lines of creative technology — where open-source ethics meet remix culture.
Mozilla’s Ziyaad Bhorat shared how the Creative Futures Program is positioning artists to shape technology itself, while Katya Alexander unveiled Showrunner, Fable Studio’s new platform that lets creators produce, edit, and even star in their own shows.

What connected both guests: a mission to restore agency, credit, and imagination in the age of generative AI.

Highlights

Mozilla Creative Futures — Art Directs Technology
Bhorat described Mozilla’s work at the intersection of art and tech — a counter to Silicon Valley’s “walled gardens.” Their vision: a creative commons where imagination leads code.

“We fund imagination, not extraction.”

The initiative builds trust with skeptical Hollywood partners by emphasizing community over transaction and process over output.

Hollywood’s Eight Rules for AI
In collaboration with the Berggruen Institute, Mozilla convened Hollywood creators to define principles for responsible AI.
Among them: protect lineage, give credit, build for process, and embrace deliberate slowness.

“Friction isn’t failure — it’s where creativity lives.”

Randomness and Glitch as Design Principles
Bhorat urged developers to preserve unpredictability in creative systems. “Glitch,” he said, is the spark that keeps machines from flattening art.

The Mozilla Data Collective
Bhorat previewed Mozilla’s “GitHub for Data,” giving artists consent, compensation, and control. Participants can decide how their voice, image, or text data is licensed — a model meant to reverse years of uncredited training set extraction.

Fable Studio / Showrunner — Remixing Cinema
Alexander positioned Showrunner as the writer’s room of the future — a platform where anyone can extend or remix cinematic worlds.
Currently in alpha, Showrunner hosts two flagship series: Exit Valley, a satire of Silicon Valley excess, and Everything Is Fine, a surreal animated relationship dramedy.

Recreating Orson Welles’ Lost Vision
Fable’s team is also using AI to reconstruct the missing 44 minutes of The Magnificent Ambersons from Welles’ original script and storyboards.
Their experiments blend motion-to-motion facial transfer, animatics, and shadow-mapping — each test refining how AI can serve restoration without replacing craft.

“We’re not replacing filmmakers — we’re rebuilding lost cinema.”

Licensing and Ethics
Alexander confirmed ongoing discussions with the Welles estate. The project remains experimental and non-commercial until rights are finalized — a case study in how to respect legacy IP while innovating.

Empowering the Next Wave of Creators
Showrunner invites pitches, hires traditional animators and editors, and rewards creators through a royalty-per-generation model: every time someone remixes your scene, you earn.

“Our success metric isn’t views — it’s generations.”

On AI Adoption and Industry Culture
Alexander was candid about frustration with “AI bad actors” who taint perception, emphasizing that mastery of AI tools will soon be a baseline expectation in film production.

“AI won’t replace you — but someone using it will.”

Key Quotes
“Protect lineage, give credit, design for depth.” — Hollywood’s Eight Rules for AI

Takeaways for Machine Cinema Creators

Reclaim authorship. Attribution and data rights are the new creative contracts.
Design for friction. Constraint fuels originality — avoid frictionless creativity.
Remix responsibly. Licensing and lineage will define ethical AI filmmaking.
Prototype heritage. AI can resurrect lost works when guided by human intent.
Engage now. The next cinematic wave isn’t automation — it’s collaboration.

Real Creative “Pick of the Week”

Each week the Machine Cinema members + the Real Creative team obsess over social feeds in search of the world’s best AI creative video, gaming, and music projects.

This week one project stuck out:

This week’s AI video pick of the week is a wild recreation of Inspector Gadget created by Destorm and director Wesley Armstrong. Destorm has been an innovator in online video for over 20 years, and Wesley has been filmmaking for 15+ years and recently started using more AI in his process. The short blends live action with AI-generated shots, which is rare, and it works. The pair has more in the works, and as Destorm explained “Gadget was created to show we can take on a heavier lift with character consistency and full AI action.”

Tools used include Higgsfield, Nano Banana, PixVerse, Lumalabs, Kling, Wan, Seedance, Sync and SUNO, thru Artlist, CapCut and a Weavy workflow.

You can find this and over 300 AI filmmakers and their projects over at realcreative.ai which features some familiar faces from the Machine Cinema community.

Overheard in We Love Robots…

Spotify’s Licensed AI Music Deal Sparks Alarm

News that Spotify partnered with major record labels to launch “artist-first” AI music products has been seen as a huge threat to open generative platforms like Suno and Udio. This move is viewed as a “terrifying” licensing lock-down, enabling major players to control the market and potentially pushing individual creators toward brand-aligned remixing.

Hollywood Consolidation and the AI Wild West

Speculation is high following reports of a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), with Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount allegedly vying for the studio. Meanwhile, Netflix openly endorsed AI for both production and advertising in its shareholder letter. The WBD situation, combined with the Sora 2 opt-out controversy, highlights industry instability and the desperate need for AI companies to build public trust.

The Robotics Takeover: From Logistics to Humanoids

The acceleration of automation outside the creative sector fueled speculation about the future of human labor. News of Amazon replacing 600,000 jobs with robotics, combined with an example of an AI-automated call center, suggests that this trend—from short-term upskilling to complete robot outsourcing—is moving quickly toward more human-centric roles.

Open-Source AI and Local Hardware

The ongoing interest in performant open-source models that can run locally was highlighted with the share of nanochat, an open-source ChatGPT stack designed by an original Transformer architecture co-creator. This offers creators a route to maintain greater control and transparency outside of massive closed models.

Writing the AI-Cyber Book: Seeking Speculatory Topics

A member writing a book sought community input for a chapter on under-discussed subjects that business leaders should know about that could affect decision-making.

Events This Week…

GenJam in Lagos: Make an AI Film in 3 Hrs!

Monday, 10/27/25 - 4pm local

GenJam Gamer Trial Run: San Francisco, California

Tuesday, 10/28/25 - 9pm local

Pop-Star GenJam: Olya Polyakova, London, England

Wednesday, 10/29/25 - 2pm local

Hypernatural GenBattle in NYC: Battle for the Best AI Video! $500 Cash Prize!

Wednesday, 10/29/25 - 6pm local

AI Film & Music Video GenJam presented by SAIFF, Tenacious Ventures and Machine Cinema: Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, 10/29/25 - 4pm local

GenTalks - Our virtual weekly digital get together with guest speakers.

Wednesday, 10/22/25 @ 10-11:15am PT / 1-2:15pm ET

RSVP to EVENTS

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