When AI Recreates Magic - What Happens to the Storytellers?
In 1991, Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” introduced the world to a visual wonder—a seamless face-morphing sequence that left audiences captivated, baffled, and utterly convinced they had glimpsed the future of filmmaking.
They had.
At that moment, morphing technology demanded months of meticulous labor, cutting-edge software, and an entire specialized team. It wasn’t just revolutionary—it was storytelling magic, a leap forward in visual narrative.
Fast forward three decades, and AI has streamlined the process, making it more accessible. While still requiring the right tools, computing power, and multiple iterations, what once took months can now be explored in days—reshaping the way we create.
For our International Women’s Day tribute this year, we leaned into this astonishing evolution. Using AI-powered tools, we breathed new life into archival photos, seamlessly morphing faces across generations and colorising moments of history without manually animating a single frame.
The reality that something groundbreaking now requires only a few clicks isn’t merely a technological leap—it’s a fundamental shift in storytelling itself. Yet, amidst the ease and wonder, an unsettling question lingers:
If technology effortlessly replicates what once required human mastery, does the magic still hold—or does something essential get lost?
From Hollywood Marvels to Personal Expression
Cinematic innovations once belonged exclusively to major studios—massive operations with substantial budgets, specialized teams, and star power. Today, those same capabilities are accessible directly through your web browser, democratized by AI-driven tools that can:
Instantly restore and colorize aged, forgotten images or footage.
Ever wonder how Marie Curie would look like in colour? The original black-and-white photos from our International Women’s Day tribute were brought to life through careful colorization and seamless morphing between frames—with AI handling much of the heavy lifting.
Seamlessly deepfake actors into new scenarios.
In this groundbreaking Cadbury campaign, AI deepfake technology enabled Shah Rukh Khan to personally endorse countless small businesses, showcasing AI’s potential to scale personalization.
Transform simple text prompts into fully-realized videos.
A visually stunning short film created entirely from text prompts by SORA, highlights the revolutionary power of OpenAI's SORA, an advanced AI video generation tool.
This isn’t merely a shift in accessibility—it’s a reshaping of who gets to wield creative power. The traditional barriers to professional-grade production are dissolving. Now, one individual armed with the right AI tools can animate, edit, and produce content previously reserved for entire studios.
But this democratization of power brings us to a crossroads: Even with the astonishing capabilities of AI, meaningful storytelling still demands something inherently human—intent, intuition, empathy, and emotional resonance.
AI can generate impressive content, but it cannot inherently discern which stories truly matter.
AI Can Mimic Mastery, But Can It Inspire?
We’re witnessing AI actively reshape creative practices across multiple disciplines:
Scriptwriting powered by generative AI.
Editing with AI-guided cuts and transitions.
Hyper-realistic visual effects, from AI de-aging to fully synthetic performances.
Yet beneath this dazzling surface lies a profound limitation: AI synthesizes from data—past films, established narratives, familiar tropes. It excels in imitation but struggles with origination. Consider the case of AI-generated scripts: they can cleverly emulate style but often fail to capture authentic emotional nuances, leaving audiences feeling disconnected.
It doesn’t understand why certain stories deeply move us, why particular images haunt our memories, or why subtle moments of human connection resonate.
AI has never wrestled with creative doubt, felt artistic obsession, nor endured heartbreak. It doesn’t experience the visceral pull of inspiration or the urgency of telling a story that must be told.
That’s the essential boundary AI cannot cross—because creativity thrives on lived human experience.
AI will change how we create, but it cannot redefine why we create.
The Future of Storytelling: Collaboration, Not Replacement
For our International Women’s Day video, AI didn’t substitute our creativity—it enhanced it. The technology streamlined workflows, expanded our imaginative horizons, and helped us visualize history in fresh, inspiring ways.
AI gave us the opportunity to reimagine feminist martyr Qiu Jin in colour, balancing historical accuracy with creative exploration. It also enabled rapid iteration of different colorization styles for historical footage, allowing for greater experimentation and ultimately achieving a deeper emotional impact.
This collaboration between human creativity and AI technology is akin to a jazz ensemble improvising with a new instrument; the musicians’ mastery and emotion guide the innovation, resulting in harmonious synergy.
Consider the recent film “The Brutalist,” which utilized AI technology to enhance the authenticity of actors’ performances.
Actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones received dialect coaching for their Hungarian dialogue, but to perfect their pronunciation, the filmmakers employed AI tools from Respeecher. This software blended the actors’ voices with native Hungarian speakers to ensure flawless delivery, demonstrating how AI can serve as a valuable collaborator in refining human performances.
That is AI’s true potential: it’s a creative collaborator, a tool to amplify and explore, not replace, the storyteller’s vision.
But where does this partnership lead us next?
Will AI-generated films become mainstream, or remain curiosities like early CGI films, fascinating but hollow?
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) Groundbreaking at its time for hyper-realistic CGI, yet widely criticized for weak storytelling and emotionally detached characters.
Can audiences genuinely connect with AI-crafted narratives, or will they feel inherently distant, detached, and ultimately unsatisfying?
How do we ethically balance AI-driven efficiency with the authenticity and vulnerability of human storytelling?
One truth emerges with clarity: The future of storytelling isn’t a battle between AI and humanity.
It’s a partnership—akin to musicians collaborating seamlessly with their instruments, each elevating the other to new artistic heights.
Because creativity isn’t about producing something new for novelty’s sake—it’s about creating something that resonates, endures, and deeply matters.
And knowing what stories truly matter? That will always remain a uniquely human gift.