In 1935, cultural critic Walter Benjamin wrote his influential essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Written in response to changing technologies and the dawn of mass media, Benjamin’s essay pondered the nature of art’s authentic aura when it became something commoditized for the masses. A century later, we’re entering the dawn of a new media technology—generative AI—and once again we’re asking questions about how the arts will change.

These questions are central in the latest Hollywood writer’s strike, and they’re already prompting dystopian explorations like the recently released ‘Joan Is Awful’ episode of Black Mirror. As I write in a recent article, the multiverse plot trend offers a foretaste of an “anything is possible” cinematic future where customized movies can be made to order. Based on a fan’s wishes to see their favorite celebrity or superhero show up on screen doing whatever their fantasy wishes, AI might one day deliver tailored movies to individual users. (The news that Across the Spider-Verse has multiple versions being played in theaters is a faint foretaste of this future).

Consider also the AI technology at play in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. If Harrison Ford’s countenance can already be artificially rendered based on existing footage, imagine the future as the technology (now in its infancy) further develops. One day it’s conceivable that long-dead actors might be resurrected on screen, inserted into AI-made movies based on a fan’s prompt (e.g. “I want to see a version of Romeo and Juliet starring Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, as if directed by Sofia Coppola). And one day, these elaborate, on-demand movies might be created as quickly as a Google search now turns up results.

What does all this mean for the meaning of a “movie” in the age of AI (let alone all the other artforms which will be affected by the technology)? Time will tell. But if the multiverse is the leading edge of it, I’m not particularly hopeful. As I write in the article below, “Movies aren’t compelling because of their unlimited plots and styles, which can do anything (Hot dog fingers! Random shifts to LEGO universes!) on a dime. Movies are compelling because they work within constraints, bound by the ‘rules’ of a contained world and what characters can and can’t do.”

I, for one, don’t want movies made by AI for just me and my particular fantasy combinations of characters and plots. I want movies made by artists, who have something to say to everyone, regardless of what any one of us might want to hear (or see).