In this interview, the filmmakers behind The End of Times talk about using AI to reimagine our ways of thinking about family, memory, and history
The Synthesis
With the rise of AI documentaries, we outline the worrying tropes these projects can’t seem to escape
As filmmakers increasingly rely on AI tools to optimize the editing process, we must ask: What is it teaching us to see, and what might we overlook as
As the distinction between AI’s use as an assistant and as a creative tool blurs, what this means for AI enhancement demands close scrutiny
Valerie Veatch traces the links between AI and eugenics in Sundance-premiering Ghost in the Machine , a self-funded documentary treatise made with
In this interview, Marc Isaacs discusses his latest provocation, a hybrid doc set at the fictional “Synthetic Sincerity Lab”
OpenAI’s Sora 2 mainstreams the collapse between irony and information, threatening the basic conditions under which documentary can operate
In this interview, Raoul Peck reflects on deploying AI-generated imagery to illuminate Orwell’s insights about linguistic manipulation
When making Deepfaking Sam Altman (2025), documentary director Adam Bhala Lough (Telemarketers) found himself in deep doo doo. Despite months of trying, he still hadn’t gotten access to an interview with Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) for a film Lough had promised about AI. So he took a page from Altman’s own MO. The resulting film follows Lough setting about on his journey, working with deepfakers in India, meeting with lawyers, and ultimately spending a lot of time chatting and bonding with the resulting AI chatbot, called SamBot. For this edition of The Synthesis, we spoke with Lough about the film, his use of AI, and its implications for documentary.
In a recent joint submission to a call for contributions on AI and Creativity at the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, WITNESS, the Co-Creation Studio at MIT, and the Archival Producers Alliance (APA) outlined these pressing dangers. Drawing from years of frontline research, workshops, and advocacy with creative communities and human rights defenders around the world, we identified seven core threats AI poses to human creativity.