Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director known for films like Traffic and Ocean's Eleven, has once again stirred controversy with his latest project. His documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview premiered on Saturday at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, and it's being discussed less for its subject matter than for its unconventional production techniques. Approximately 10% of the film's visuals were generated using Meta's AI software, a decision that has drawn sharp criticism from reviewers and audiences alike. Soderbergh, however, is unapologetic. He argues that the real problem isn't his use of AI, but the fact that he's one of the few in the industry willing to disclose it.
The documentary is built around a never-before-released two-hour-and-45-minute radio interview that John Lennon and Yoko Ono gave to a San Francisco KFRC radio crew from their home in New York's Dakota Apartments on December 8, 1980, hours before Lennon was shot and killed. Soderbergh and his team edited the interview down to 97 minutes, creating a film that captures Lennon at age 40, speaking with unusual clarity about love, parenthood, creativity, and his desire to dismantle the male rock star myth. The audio alone is powerful, but Soderbergh chose to complement it with visuals, including a hyperkinetic montage of over 1,000 photographs and video clips from archives, edited to the rhythm of the conversation. Critics have described this approach as a photo album on steroids, but it's the AI-generated sequences that have sparked the most debate.
The AI sections are abstract and surreal: circles of light, a black rose morphing into a choreographic pattern, paint colors mixing in split screen alongside lovers caressing. There are no deepfakes of Lennon, and the sequences are used only for passages where the conversation turns philosophical and no archival footage exists to illustrate the ideas being discussed. Soderbergh disclosed the partnership with Meta earlier this year and has been characteristically direct about the backlash. I knew what was coming, he told the Associated Press in Cannes. You don't say yes to Meta offering you these tools and offering to finish the film and not know you're going to come in for some heat. That was part of the deal.
Soderbergh's framework for when AI is justified in filmmaking is refreshingly straightforward. It has to be necessary, he explained. Is it the only way to accomplish what I want to see? Is it truly the best way to do it? He argued that the surreal sequences would have been prohibitively expensive to produce using conventional visual effects, and that the AI tools allowed him to iterate quickly on imagery he struggled to articulate verbally. I wasn't very articulate to the people I was working with, he said. It was hard to describe the things I wanted to see. The good part about this technology was at least the ability to have something in front of me quickly that I could respond to. This pragmatic approach echoes his broader career, which has often embraced new technologies and unconventional methods. Soderbergh is known for experimenting with digital cinema, handheld cameras, and innovative editing techniques, from the low-budget indie Sex, Lies, and Videotape to the experimental mixtape Bubble.
But the broader argument Soderbergh is making is about transparency, not permission. In the world outside of the creative context, we're not aware of the extent that this is being used and used to manipulate us, he said. We don't know because they're not telling. We find out after, by accident, by some whistle blower. I'm like my own whistle blower. The position is deliberately provocative. He believes that countless filmmakers, advertisers, and content creators are using AI without disclosure, and that the public is being manipulated as a result. By openly using AI and facing the criticism, Soderbergh aims to force a conversation about the technology's role in storytelling. This argument aligns with data published this week by Canva, whose State of Marketing and AI Report found that 97% of marketing leaders now use AI daily, while 78% of consumers still prefer human-made creative work, and 87% say the best advertising requires a human touch. Mentions of AI slop have increased ninefold. The gap between how widely AI is being used and how willing creators are to admit it is the structural dishonesty Soderbergh is pointing at.
His position on AI's threat to filmmaking jobs is more measured than most industry voices. I think most jobs that matter when you're making a movie cannot be performed by this tech and never will be performed by this tech, he said. As it becomes possible for anybody to create something that meets a certain standard of technical perfection, then imperfection becomes more valuable and more interesting. The formulation inverts the usual anxiety. Rather than AI raising the floor and eliminating human work, Soderbergh suggests it will make distinctively human imperfection the scarce and therefore valuable commodity. This is a nuanced take from a director who has consistently blurred the lines between art and technology. Soderbergh's career is marked by a willingness to take risks, from his early breakout Sex, Lies, and Videotape to his ambitious Ocean's trilogy, the intense drama Traffic, and the experimental Contagion. He has also directed several documentaries, including And Everything Is Going Fine about Spalding Gray and The Great Raid, though none have courted as much controversy as this one.
The film industry has been cautiously integrating AI tools for several years. Flawless AI's DeepEditor, which digitally alters video to synchronize actors' lip movements with dubbed audio tracks, has been deployed in mainstream productions since 2022 with the consent of performers through its Artistic Rights Treasury platform. The SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023 established that any meaningful digital alterations to performances require explicit actor consent. Soderbergh's use case is different. He is not altering existing performances but generating entirely new visual content to accompany audio that has no corresponding video. The ethical territory is less charted. Legal experts note that AI-generated imagery based on no specific copyrighted material may avoid infringement issues, but the creative integrity questions remain. For instance, if an AI generates an image resembling a known artist's style, who owns that output? These are unresolved questions that Soderbergh's film brings to the forefront.
Critics at Cannes were largely unimpressed with the AI sequences. Variety described them as the weakest part of an otherwise immersive experience. The Wrap, however, was more positive, calling the film a work that does as much to demystify Lennon and Ono as Get Back did to the Beatles. The conversation itself, expertly edited by Soderbergh and Nancy Main from 165 minutes to 97, captures Lennon in a state of unusual clarity. He speaks about his relationship with Ono, his time as a stay-at-home father, his disillusionment with the rock star image, and his hope for a better world. What I hope young people who see it get out of it is: This guy told the truth about everything from the jump, right up through the last day of his life, Soderbergh said. He was very opinionated but also very thoughtful and all in the aid of: Can we do this better? Can we do a better version of human beings on this planet?
The copyright and creative integrity questions that AI raises in filmmaking are not resolved by one documentary or one director's framework. Soderbergh acknowledges this openly. I don't know where my line is yet. I'm waiting to see, he said. Each creative person is going to have their own prism and be affected by it in different ways. Our inherent desire to have a simple template for how this is to be approached is part of the problem. I don't think that's possible. This admission of uncertainty is refreshing in a debate often filled with absolutes. Soderbergh's willingness to experiment and discuss the results transparently could serve as a model for others in the industry, even if the film itself remains divisive.
The documentary does not yet have a distributor. It was financed in part by Meta, which provided both the AI tools and funding to complete the project. Whether audiences beyond Cannes will have the chance to judge the AI sequences for themselves, or whether the controversy will overshadow the conversation it was built to preserve, is a question that will be answered by whoever decides to buy it. In the meantime, Soderbergh's move has already achieved one of his stated goals: it has sparked a necessary conversation about AI transparency in filmmaking. As the technology continues to evolve, films like John Lennon: The Last Interview may be remembered not just for their content, but for the ethical boundaries they tested.