How real is real? AI and documentary reality
Dr Shweta Kishore is a lecturer and the lead of screen and media at RMIT University’s school of media and communication. She explores the balance between innovation and authenticity in documentary filmmaking.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming every aspect of cinema from production to distribution and audience engagement. But it is not without its challenges, particularly in the case of documentary film which relies on values of truth, authenticity and facts.
While artistic creativity and selection are key to documentary representation, recent releases such as About a Hero (2024), Another Body (2023), Welcome to Chechnya (2020), Roadrunner (2021) highlight the ethical dilemmas AI introduces, including its environmental impact.
In adjacent fields of narrative cinema and video games, AI is already transforming reality into imaginative screen worlds. Games like Block Party create human avatar Non-Player Characters based on real documentary subjects. In documentary, AI is entangled with processes, from research – summarising online content using ChatGPT, digging into archives, transcription and translation of interviews, to creative functions such as filling gaps in footage and the editing of short visual sequences that bypass human editors.
