Artificial Aesthetics Rethinking Authorship, Aesthetics, and Affect in AI - Generated Cinema

Abstract

This article explores how artificial intelligence is changing the work of filmmakers and the way we understand authorship in today’s cinema. It looks closely at three short films made entirely with AI tools: The Frost (Waymark, 2024), Thank You for Not Answering (Paul Trillo, 2023), and Poof (Pizza Later, 2024). Rather than treating creativity as the expression of a single author, these films show it as something that takes shape between human decisions, machine outputs, and the viewer’s interpretation. Using ideas from Barthes, Foucault, Manovich, Zylinska, and Arielli, the article argues that the filmmaker’s role shifts from controlling images to working with what the system generates and making sense of it. Visually, these films reveal a kind of aesthetic that comes from the technology itself; glitches, unstable textures, and partial forms that reflect the way AI “sees” and constructs the image. The emotional impact also works differently: instead of being predetermined by the filmmaker, it emerges through the viewer’s response to the uncertainty and strangeness of the images. Ethically, the films raise questions about responsibility and transparency, reminding us that any creative work involving AI depends on the data, tools, and systems that make it possible. Taken together, these films suggest that AI does not necessarily push human creativity aside. Instead, it expands the space where meaning can be produced, creating a kind of shared authorship in which humans and machines both play a part. The article uses the term “relational authorship” to describe this shift and argues that it offers a useful way to understand how aesthetics, emotion, and ethics come together in AI-generated cinema.