In the upcoming historical action film, As Deep as The Grave, an AI-generated performance of the late American actor, Val Kilmer, who is known for his roles as “The Iceman” in Top Gun (1986) and Batman/Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever (1995), will be shown in the film, despite the actor passing from throat cancer in 2025 before having the chance to act in the movie.

The producers emphasized Val Kilmer’s consent in the process, as he had agreed to have his performance in the movie represented by an AI-Generated model of him before he passed.

AI usage in film has major implications. Over the years, we have seen a few attempts to incorporate AI in film, such as the world’s first completely AI-Generated actress, Tilly Norwood, created by Xicoia, a subdivision of the production company Particle6, which specializes in “AI-first production” in film.

And on social media, AI-Generated micro-series have been making their way into our feed, most recently with the infamous “Fruit Love Island,” which was a completely AI generated mini-series featuring anthropomorphic fruits in a parody of the reality show Love Island, as well as other accounts who quickly rode that bandwagon until they were ultimately deleted off of TikTok and Sora AI was closed to public access.

It is clear to many that AI-Generated content does very well on social media, especially in little snippets you can encounter scrolling. AI produces content that would otherwise takes months to plan and create. AI makes content easy and cheap to produce, which is why it appeals to so many content creators who want to make it big on the internet.

So what does this mean? Could we be seeing fully AI-generated movies in the future? Will AI replace artists and actors?

I don’t think we can fully know how AI may look if implemented more in media and film.

As an artist who will be attending art school to learn animation, I myself have had to deal with the reality of AI and how it has been used to create art. But what I do know is that people always have and will value the creativity and hard work of human creation. And now, it is more important than others to share and express our creativity in a loud and bold way in the face of cheap AI-generated slop.

I don’t think fully AI-reliant productions and films will be profitable, for a long time at least, though in the coming years it is likely we will continue to see a trend of AI usage being more prominent in film and other media.