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The Prompt (10')

Humanity has written many novels, films, and stories about Artificial Intelligences destroying humanity. Those very stories were then used to train AIs, which can now only act out these clichés and try to destroy humanity. A self-fulfilling apocalypse.

  • Francesco Frisari
    Director
    Because I'm a Genius! Lorenza Mazzetti (2016), What Happiness (2025)
  • Francesco Frisari
    Writer
    Because I'm a Genius! Lorenza Mazzetti (2016), What Happiness (2025)
  • Vittorio Martone
    Producer
    The First Time (2017), Porpora (2021), What Happiness (2025)
  • Marco Catani
    Art director
    What Happiness (2025)
  • Duné Medros
    Key Cast
    "Narrator"
    Verso la notte (2020), Dead Bride (2022), Conversazioni con altre donne (2023)
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short, Web / New Media
  • Genres:
    Metafiction, Dystopia, Satire, Recursive Science Fiction
  • Runtime:
    9 minutes 59 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 30, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2,35:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • New York Shorts International Film Festival - Best AI Film Award
    New York, NY
    United States
    October 10, 2024
    World Premiere
    Best AI Film
  • Torino Film Festival
    Torino
    Italy
    November 28, 2024
    International Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Los Angeles Animation Festival
    Los Angeles, California
    United States
    Honorable Mention
  • Türkiye International Artificial Intelligence Film Festival
    Istanbul
    Turkey
    November 9, 2024
    National Premiere
    Experimental AI Short Film
  • Australian XR Festival
    Sydney
    Australia
    December 14, 2024
    National Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Shorts Attack
    Berlin
    Germany
    January 9, 2025
    Official Selection
Director Biography - Francesco Frisari

Francesco Frisari, a PhD in philosophy, is pursuing an MA in Creative Fiction Writing at Columbia University. He is a writer, executive producer, and director working in cinema, theatre, and for Rai television, the leading Italian broadcaster. He wrote and directed the feature documentary "Because I'm a Genius! Lorenza Mazzetti", which was presented at the Venice Film Festival and won a Nastro d'Argento. Creative director at Fantomatica, he is the writer and director of the documentary "What Happiness" (currently in post-production) in collaboration with Rai Cinema and Emilia-Romagna Film Commission. "The Prompt" is his first AI-generated short film, an experiment in the field of AI filmmaking supported by Rai Cinema, by the Italian Association AIxIA, led by the chief of the Italian Governmental Task Force on AI, and by the Universities of Bologna, Torino, and Valle d'Aosta.

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Director Statement

"The Prompt" is a speculative animated short film that explores the promises and perils of Artificial Intelligence through this same technology. Images, camera movements, and the narrating voice are AI-generated, creating a meta-narrative that will make sense as the story progresses.

Drawing inspiration from Chris Marker's "La Jetée," quoted in the opening credits, our film is a video-novel where the narrator's voice and the nature of the images are central to the narrative. The events unfold through a detached, bird's-eye perspective, emphasizing the global scale of the facts and the narrator's unique viewpoint, who will be revealed to be a major character. The visual style mixes a photorealistic approach with increasingly surreal images, mirroring the story's trajectory. As we delve deeper into this world, we enter an uncanny valley where AIs are ghostlike digital figures, embodying the "ghost in the machine" theme that permeates the narrative.

The issue addressed by the film is a genuine concern for Artificial Intelligence, which risks absorbing and replicating the content it's trained on, as we've explored in depth with AIxIA, the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence and its 1800 academics, who are funding and supporting this project alongside Rai Cinema. However, "The Prompt" is not just a film about AI made with AI, but aims to be a broader reflection, both sarcastic and fantastical, on how the risks of technology are largely manifestations of the human nature that created it. At the heart of our inventions, and even more so with AI, lie our choices and our stories.