“There are no rules”: Gossip Goblin in the spotlight as AI filmmaking enters a new era

In a former hemstitch workshop where artisans sewed pleats for the 19th-century Stockholm bourgeoisie, a craft that clearly belongs to the 21st century is taking root: making AI films.

One day last week, an actor, director and composer squeezed into a tiny studio booth to record a voiceover for their next AI release. Critics decry AI films as “automated slop” or fraud and complain about what they see as industrial-scale copyright theft. But there was a decidedly smug feel to the whole thing, as the small team took care of a monologue from a poetic Scottish gorilla living in a transhumanist cyberpunk universe. “It was a bit like recording the Archers,” one of them joked.

This was a new-era production from Gossip Goblin, the pseudonym of a tiny kitchen-table AI filmmaking group led by Zack London whose audience is growing rapidly—he expects more than 500 million views.