“There are a lot of new concepts that are being tossed about, you know, including the use of AI,” Penn said at a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival.
“And this just strikes me as a kind of human obscenity, for there to be any pushback on that from the producers.”
The dispute over AI is one of several issues that led Hollywood’s film and TV writers to go on strike earlier this month in their first work stoppage in 15 years.
The Writers Guild of America is seeking to restrict the use of AI in writing scripts.
Hollywood studios, battling to make streaming services profitable and dealing with shrinking ad revenues, have rejected that idea, saying they would be open to discussing new technologies once a year, according to the guild.
“It’s difficult for so many people, so many writers and so many people in the industry, to not be able to work during this time,” added Penn. “And I guess it’s gonna soul-search itself and see which side toughs it out.”
Penn is in the Cannes competition film “Black Flies” – a gritty New York City drama about paramedics that also stars Tye Sheridan of “Ready Player One” – which premiered on Thursday evening.
Penn, who is known for his political and social activism, also co-directed “Superpower”, a feature-length profile of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy that was filmed before and after Russia invaded the country in February 2022.
It premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February this year.
Soggy Friday at Cannes
Premieres on a particularly rainy Friday at Cannes yesterday included British director Jonathan Glazer’s debut entry for the top prize, Auschwitz drama “The Zone of Interest”, whose premiere drew celebrities including Cate Blanchett and Carla Bruni.
German actor Christian Friedel plays Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, where over 1.1 million people were murdered in the largest of the concentration camps and extermination centres built by the Nazis in occupied Poland.
Meanwhile, Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania mixed fiction and documentary in “Four Daughters”, the story of Olfa Hamrouni, whose older daughters left to fight for Islamic State. This marks Ben Hania’s first entry for the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize.
The only Arab entry in competition follows Hamrouni, who drew international attention in 2016 for criticising Tunisian authorities for failing to stop one of her daughters from fleeing to Libya to join her sister in fighting for the Islamic militant group.
And elsewhere, Turkish auteur filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan returned to Cannes’ red carpet with his latest competition entry, “About Dry Grasses”.
Ceylan and his film team gathered in front of the Palais des Festivals as rain lashed the French Riviera city and puddles formed on the red carpet and the plastic sheets covering it.
Including “About Dry Grasses”, Ceylan’s films have been in the running for the Palme d’Or seven times, with only “Winter Sleep” taking the top prize in 2014.