Nigerian filmmaker Akay Mason has argued that artificial intelligence-generated films cannot replace the emotional connection created by human actors.

Mason, in a post shared on X on Friday, said AI-generated films lacked the emotional depth audiences instinctively associated with human performances.

“AI films will fail. Every AI short film I’ve seen lacks the emotional connection we instinctively feel when watching actual humans perform. It just feels empty,” he said.

The filmmaker also attributed part of the appeal of human actors to celebrity culture and audiences’ tendency to idolise stars.

“Another reason is our tendency toward idolatry and celebrity culture. We love to worship our stars. With AI films, there are no stars to worship. You know the character on screen is nothing but a series of codes,” he said.

Mason, however, acknowledged that AI could be useful as a filmmaking tool for certain technical tasks.

“Sure, filmmakers now use AI as a tool to fix VFX, lighting, or sound issues, and that’s perfectly okay (heck, I even used ChatGPT to fix a few grammatical issues with this post),” he said.

He maintained that despite the growing use of AI in filmmaking, the technology could not replicate the essence of a human actor’s performance.

“But if we’re being real, AI actors cannot replace a real actor’s performance, which is, at its core, the expression of the human soul,” he said.