The Machine Cinema Times
May 24th, 2025... still wondering if robots have celluloid dreams.
In this issue
“Overheard in Basecamp” for the week May 14-21
New Podcast/ Essay Featuring Anatola Araba
Overheard in Basecamp - Week of May 14–21, 2025
Our Machine Cinema Basecamp is a firehose of activity and even the most diehard members of our community can feel overwhelmed sometimes. This weekly digest of hot topics discussed, links and articles shared and discussed is here to make sure you never miss a beat.
If you’d like to join the conversation, this link is your invitation.
Full disclosure, we had our robot friend help us pull all this together and sometimes they are prone to making harmless mistakes.
🔥 HOT TOPICS
🧠 Can AI Learn Taste? A Debate on Creativity, Culture & LLM Limits
A rich, philosophical debate exploded over whether AI can truly understand "good" storytelling or merely remix what it's seen. Some argue LLMs are trained, not taught, and lack symbolic abstraction. Others see tools like Cursor or Claude as early proof that AI can eventually enhance narrative taste and structure.
“Taste is taught,” one user argued. “TikTok is already teaching AI what people like.”
Still, the jury's out on whether AI can create something genuinely new.
🎥 Veo 3 vs Runway: The AI Video Platform Wars Heat Up
Google’s Veo 3 and Flow dominated the week. The platform boasts built-in audio generation, lip-syncing, and user-friendly UI—what some called the “Apple UI of filmmaking.”
Price: $250/month for ~80 generations.
Runway’s CEO publicly downplayed it.
But many saw it as a massive leap—combining Sora-like features into one dashboard.
📢 Public Beef: DreamFlare Accused of IP Theft
A post on X sparked a wave of allegations against DreamFlare, a distributor accused of using artists' work without consent. Creators are mobilizing.
At least three artists say they never gave authorization.
One is demanding 10% of the max statutory fine—others may join for a class action.
Raises broader questions around vetting and platform accountability.
🎮 Narrative Games Meet AI: Law & Order Gets Generative
Law & Order's new AI game blends procedural drama with daily generative murder mysteries.
An ambitious attempt to marry replayability with narrative complexity.
🎓 Ethics in Docs: Transparency & AI Interviews
For doc filmmakers using AI-generated avatars, the Archival Producers Alliance guidelines came highly recommended. Transparency is key, especially when blending real voices with synthetic visuals.
📦 AI Tools for Workshops: From Runway to Freepik
Planning an AI film bootcamp? A list of “must-haves” emerged:
Midjourney, Runway Unlimited, Kling 2.0, ChatGPT-4o, Pika Labs
ElevenLabs for audio, Freepik for design
Emphasis on stitching workflows across platforms
🗣️ Voice of a Child? GenAI Audio Explorations
One member asked how to generate realistic child-like voices. Narakeet and ElevenLabs Studio came up, though most libraries skew adult.
🧩 Neural Assets: The Next Leap in Image Modeling?
The group speculated on "neural assets"—3D manipulable elements generated via prompts. This would give AI-generated visuals the kind of flexibility you'd expect in CGI environments.
🌍 Global Scene Check-ins: Argentina, Nigeria & Cannes
Creators from Mendoza and Lagos shared updates.
Cannes attendees repped the booth and screened new AI work.
Four Basecamp members are now finalists at the AI International Film Festival.
🎭 Sam Altman’s Brand Makeover: Sincere or Strategy?
OpenAI’s new video featuring Sam Altman and Jony Ive divided opinion. Some found it humanizing; others saw branding sleight of hand. “We’re not overlords, we’re warm overlords.”
🔗 Link Drop: What the Community Shared
🧪 Tools & Industry
🎥 Film & Art Projects
📚 Thought Pieces
Podcast/ Essay: Visionary Fiction w/ Anatola Araba
Links to longer conversation on Youtube, Spotify, and Apple. Follow us on Instagram.
In a world saturated with dystopian visions of the future, Anatola Araba stands out as a collector of hope. As the founder of Reimagine Story Lab, Anatola doesn't just passively consume science fiction—she actively curates visions of futures where liberation, abundance, and human connection remain central.
"Some people collect baseball cards or figurines, and I like to collect visions for the future because I believe that with so many grim and dystopian fantasies that are swirling around in our collective imagination that having hope for a future that we want to live in is this radical and courageous act."
This radical act of hope emerges from her work in Afrofuturism—a framework for imagining worlds where historically marginalized communities are fully liberated and self-expressed. Anatola's approach emerged from workshops where she discovered a troubling pattern: when asked about the future, particularly in relation to technology, people immediately gravitated toward apocalyptic scenarios. Her response was to deliberately collect and create constructive alternatives.
Anatola's work emerged from workshops where she discovered a troubling pattern: when asked about the future, particularly in relation to technology, people immediately gravitated toward apocalyptic scenarios. This tendency isn't confined to her workshops—it permeates our films, novels, and public discourse. We seem more practiced at imagining how things might fall apart than how they might come together in new and beautiful ways.
Who Gets to Imagine Tomorrow?
Everything around us was first imagined before it was built, but as Anatola points out, we rarely consider who did the imagining and who they were imagining for. This question cuts to the heart of why diverse visions matter. When the same demographic groups consistently dominate our cultural imagination, we get futures designed primarily for and by those groups.
"I see Afrofuturism as a framework or invitation to tell stories of futures where people from the global Africa are liberated and fully self-expressed and engage with new technology in order to make a world of abundance."
The stories we tell about the future don't just reflect possibilities—they create them. Expanding who gets to imagine tomorrow means expanding what tomorrow could be, revealing solutions that might otherwise remain invisible.
Values Drive Technology
Perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of Anatola's work is her focus on values rather than technological capabilities. While much discourse centers on what AI or renewable energy might enable, she asks what values should drive these developments.
"You can have any new technology, but without values changing, then it's just the same."
When she asks workshops what values should drive society, the consistent answers are "community" and "love"—not the competition and productivity that typically drive technological development. She illustrates this with Los Angeles, where new public transportation remains underutilized despite notorious traffic problems. The deeply entrenched car culture—with its values of individual mobility, status, and private ownership—has prevented widespread adoption of transit solutions. Technology alone doesn't transform society; it amplifies existing patterns unless we consciously shift the underlying values.
Constructive Over Destructive
Anatola's vision isn't naive techno-optimism. She acknowledges the place for cautionary tales, comparing them to fables that teach us what not to do. The distinction lies in what's constructive—what gives us blueprints we can build upon rather than just warnings to heed.
"I think the distinction is constructive to build upon and constructive to be a part of the story we're all going on to inform our idea of what the world can be like."
This is particularly evident in education, where AI threatens to both enhance and undermine human learning. While she highlights the risk of students outsourcing their thinking entirely, she also sees AI's potential for personalized attention that might otherwise be unavailable. The challenge is ensuring "our own smartness and intelligence will be the driving force behind these AI tools."
The Courage to Hope
What stays with us most about Anatola's perspective is her framing of hope as courage. In a cultural landscape where cynicism often masquerades as sophistication, choosing to imagine positive futures requires genuine bravery. This isn't about ignoring problems or abandoning critical thinking—it's about recognizing that criticism without creation leaves us nowhere to go.
"Until then, I hope that we all have a little more courageous optimism."
By collecting visions of futures worth living in, Anatola provides not just inspiration but direction—coordinates for worlds we might actually want to build. The invitation to contribute our own visions feels like more than creative exercise; it's a reminder that the future isn't something that simply arrives, but something we actively imagine and construct together.
Follow Anatola Araba at links below!
Website: www.anatolaaraba.com
Linkedln: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anatola-araba/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anatolaaraba/
Words by humans + Claude.