Guillermo del Toro ‘would rather die’ than use AI

The red line is drawn. Guillermo del Toro offers a clear position regarding AI, in a long interview with the American radio NPR. The Mexican director, who will premiere his adaptation of frankenstein on Netflix on November 7, will never use generative artificial intelligence, “not now, not ever.” “I would rather die,” he says.

For Guillermo del Toro the parallel with Victor Frankenstein is not coincidental. In his next film, the scientist embodies that arrogance of the creator who creates without thinking about the consequences. “I wanted Victor’s arrogance to be similar to that of the ‘tech bros,'” he explains. “It’s blind, creating something without considering the consequences, and I think we need to pause and think about the direction we’re taking.”

The filmmaker does not hide his concern about what he calls not “artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity.” It is she, according to him, who feeds “the worst aspects of the world.” A coherent vision with a filmography that has never stopped exploring misunderstood creatures, men who behave like monsters and scientific experiments that go wrong.

“Personal Avatar”

This adaptation of frankenstein It represents the culmination of a childhood dream of Guillermo del Toro. At the age of seven, in a Mexican movie theater, he discovered the 1931 film starring Boris Karloff. The scene in which the creature first appears at the door is “an epiphany” for him. “I saw the resurrection of the flesh, the immaculate conception, the ecstasy, the stigmata. It all made sense,” he remembers. “I understood my faith or my dogmas better through frankenstein only until Sunday mass.”

Frankenstein’s monster then becomes his “personal avatar” and his “personal messiah.” More than fifty years later, the director reinterprets Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, telling the final part of the story from the creature’s point of view. Starring Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the monster, the film was favorably received at its world premiere at the 82nd Venice Film Festival in late August.

This fidelity to the original novel is combined with an obsession with manual work: the director has also partnered with Netflix to launch a stop motion school in Paris. “I want real scenarios,” he insists. “I don’t want digital, I don’t want AI, I don’t want simulation. I want old craftsmanship: people who paint, build, hammer, plaster.” Thus, Frankenstein’s laboratory and Captain Anderson’s ship were built entirely in physical environments.

For the creature itself, del Toro was inspired by 19th century phrenology textbooks, creating a being with elegant, almost aerodynamic lines, with the appearance of alabaster or marble. “I wanted that statue-like feel, to look like a newly created human being,” he explains. An aesthetic choice that, according to him, also recalls the life-size images of Christ in the churches of his childhood.