Seth Rogen Has Zero Patience for AI Slop Videos, and His Message to Writers Who Use It Is Brutally Clear
Seth Rogen has spent a career making the case that writing is a process worth going through, and his latest project at the Cannes Film Festival puts that belief front and center in more ways than one.
The actor, producer, and writer arrived at this year’s festival to champion ‘Tangles’, an animated feature he co-produced with his wife Lauren Miller Rogen. The film is directed by Leah Nelson and adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s real-life graphic memoir, following a young woman who must step away from her activist life in 1990s San Francisco after Alzheimer’s begins erasing her mother’s vibrant personality. The voice cast includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Abbi Jacobson, and Samira Wiley, and the film is produced entirely through hand-drawn animation, a choice Nelson made to ensure the artists’ touch remained visible throughout every frame.
The world premiere in the festival’s Special Screenings section on May 14 earned a thunderous seven-minute standing ovation, moving cast, crew, and audiences to tears with its Alzheimer’s story. Lauren Miller Rogen, whose late mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s at just 55 years old, was visibly moved as the lights came up, making the evening one of the most emotionally charged premieres of the entire festival. Rogen later shared that he was crying throughout the whole screening, noting it was the first time he had seen the finished film in a theater alongside a full audience rather than at home on his laptop.
It was against that emotionally loaded backdrop that Rogen sat down with Brut America and delivered a response to the state of AI in creative work that quickly spread across every corner of entertainment media. Asked about artificial intelligence in filmmaking, he told the outlet he cannot make sense of what the technology is supposed to offer, and that every time he sees a video on social media insisting Hollywood is finished, what follows is among the most bewilderingly bad AI-generated content he has ever encountered in his life.
He took his point directly at writers, arguing that leaning on AI instead of doing the actual work is not a shortcut but a disqualifier. As Variety reported, Rogen said that if a person’s instinct is to turn to AI rather than work through the creative process, that person simply should not be a writer, because what they are doing does not constitute writing. He added that a tool designed to make him write less holds zero appeal since he genuinely enjoys writing, and he advised anyone who disagrees to find a different profession entirely.
The industry is grappling with the same tension on a much larger scale, with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences having recently confirmed that AI-generated performances and AI-assisted screenplays will not qualify for Oscar consideration. The conversation has sharpened a clear divide between creators who see generative tools as an existential threat to craft and those willing to explore what the technology might eventually offer.
‘Tangles’ arrives as one of the more compelling arguments for Rogen’s position. A project nearly ten years in the making, rooted in real personal grief and shaped by the hands of artists at every stage of its production, the film’s reception at Cannes suggests audiences can feel the difference between something made with process and something made without it.
If you think Rogen’s definition of who earns the title of writer is exactly right, or if you believe his line in the sand ignores how creative tools have always evolved alongside the people who use them, that debate is very much worth opening up in the comments.
