Steven Soderbergh Stands By AI in John Lennon Documentary — Here's Why

Steven Soderbergh brought his John Lennon doc to Cannes and, predictably, walked right into the AI buzzsaw. He did not duck it. If anything, he leaned in and basically said: if using AI makes the movie better, he is fine being the guy everyone asks about it.

So what exactly did he do with AI in 'John Lennon: The Last Interview '?

• The film includes a stylized sequence built around an abstract back-and-forth between John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Soderbergh used AI to generate intentionally unreal imagery there — think cavemen and babies crying — because he wanted it to feel funny and surreal, not literal.
• He said hiring an actor to play a caveman would have sent the wrong signal (too realistic, too earnest). The point was to make you feel the idea, not believe the image.
• He is upfront that the scene is not meant to look real. That is part of why AI made sense to him: it solved a creative problem he could not crack as cleanly another way.
• Big picture, he sees AI as a tool for artists. He keeps coming back to exploration — get to the new normal fast so everyone knows what they are actually dealing with.

He knows the backlash is coming — and he is weirdly fine with it

Soderbergh told Vanity Fair he expected to become a public explainer for the tech the moment he used it. He says the trade-off is worth it if it gets him to the strongest version of the movie and properly honors Lennon and his family ( when he says 'Sean,' he means Sean Ono Lennon).

'That is the trade-off to make the best version of this. And so that is the trade-off that I have to accept, because I owe people the best version of it and I owe Sean that.'

He also put it more broadly: he is a believer in trying things. Or, as he put it, he wants to reach the new reality of this stuff as soon as possible so everyone can see what it really is.

The industry vibe: cautious, loud, and very late to clarity

Hollywood is still skittish about AI — lots of big names have come out against it — but Soderbergh does not mind being the person saying: let us talk about how it is actually being used. He thinks transparency is how you find the 'best use' cases (his words) without pretending the tech is going away. He also points out the obvious: AI is moving so fast that laws and union rules are lagging behind, which is why people are anxious. Add in a general lack of trust that the people in charge will make the right ethical calls, and you get fear. Wherever this lands, he thinks the need for real guidelines is not up for debate.

Or as he told Vanity Fair, he is hoping that if people are transparent about how AI is used, the business can figure out the best way to use it — without pretending it does not exist.

Cannes rollout and the Lennon context

The film is playing at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and folks on the ground were posting from screenings as early as May 15. While it was unspooling on the Croisette, fans were also resurfacing Lennon clips — including his April 8, 1975 appearance on The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, often billed as his last major TV interview — which slots neatly alongside a movie literally called 'The Last Interview.'

Bottom line: Soderbergh knows using AI in a Lennon doc is going to spark pushback. He did it anyway, on purpose, for a specific sequence he wanted to feel absurd and conceptual. And he is actively volunteering to be the guy taking questions about it, because in his mind that is part of getting to something better — for the film, and for how the industry uses the tech at all.