At the Sarajevo Film Festival, the SAA co-organised a panel with CineLink Talks asking whether AI in film and the audiovisual sector is a threat or a tool. Panellists representing a CMO, an author, a film fund and a producer set out different perspectives, and the discussion drew a lively response from the audience.
Jana Vozarova, SAA board member, CEO of the Slovak CMO LITA and a lawyer by training, didn’t sugar-coat her assessment. AI is, she said, a trillion-dollar business, built on copyrighted works used without authorisation, leaving authors both unremunerated and unheard. She called for transparency from AI companies and questioned whether current EU legislation goes far enough to protect authors.
Polish producer Joanna Szymanska agreed that knowing who is behind the technology matters, arguing that using copyrighted works to train AI models breaches IP law and does not qualify as ‘fair use’, and that human creative work should not be treated as raw data for content generation. At the same time, Szymanska was candid about being an early adopter of AI for administrative tasks, using it to free up more time for creative work. But she stressed that using such tools well requires a clear sense of purpose: "The tactile knowledge we hold in our bodies, built through experience, cannot be fed into a model." She added that efficiency should not be the organising principle of life - taking a walk in nature or reading a book is not efficient, either. Szymanska also raised a longer-term concern: if AI slop comes to dominate, distinguishing real art may become difficult, and human-made filmmaking could end up as a rare privilege for the few who can afford it.
Sashko Potter Micevski, film editor and director of the North Macedonian Film Agency, uses AI in his own work but voiced concern about copyright breaches and the erosion of craftsmanship, noting that an entire generation now lacks basic filmmaking skills. He was also critical of AI companies being absent to respond to the sector's questions and concerns: "We don't know what we're dealing with, and we don't know what their next move is."
Slovenian writer-director Sonja Prosenc recognised the value AI can bring to organisation, research and post-production, but questioned whether films built around AI-generated sequences should qualify for public financing. She also raised a more personal worry about how her own work is used: when she sends out a script, will it be read by a person or by ChatGPT, and will the model learn from it in the process?
One young participant asked why films made with AI should be labelled, considering it no different from films using green screen or visual effects. Another went further, questioning why AI should be treated as a problem at all: "Artists are inspired by others, so I don't care if people steal my work."
Closing the discussion, SAA Secretary General Cécile Despringre responded that large AI companies want to appear as acting as allies to young artists. Their real aim, she argued, is to make themselves indispensable and profitable, and if they are to keep using artists' work to train their models, they should pay for it and share in the profits it generates.
Read more about the SAA’s work on AI.
Annica Ryng
