Demi Moore at Cannes: "Fighting AI Is a Battle We Will Lose"

Demi Moore, serving on the 79th Cannes Film Festival jury, told the opening press conference on May 12 that Hollywood should stop fighting artificial intelligence and start finding ways to use it. Her statement became the defining AI story of the festival's first day, drawing broad coverage and sharp criticism in equal measure.

"Find Ways in Which We Can Work With It"

Moore did not frame AI as something to celebrate. When asked whether Hollywood is doing enough to regulate it, she answered: "I don't know the answer, but probably not". Still, she argued that resistance was the wrong approach. "AI is here, and so to fight it is, in a sense, to fight something that is a battle that we will lose", she said.

She offered a different orientation: "find ways in which we can work with it" is "a more valuable path to take". The principle behind it, in her words: "against-ness breeds against-ness". She drew a distinction between using AI and surrendering to it. "There are beautiful aspects to being able to utilize it", Moore said, "but true art comes from the human spirit".

Moore also addressed the broader question of self censorship in filmmaking. "If we start censoring ourselves, then we shut down the very core of our creativity, which is, I think, where we can discover truth and answers", she said. The comment applied to political content as much as AI, and it set up a theme the jury returned to throughout the press conference.

AV Club described Moore's remarks as her "parroting AI talking points." That reaction points to a real fault line. For many in the industry, pragmatic accommodation of AI and principled resistance to it are not equally valid positions, and Moore's framing treats them as if they are.

Park Chan-wook Leads the Jury

Jury president Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director of "Oldboy", "The Handmaiden", and "Decision to Leave", became the first South Korean filmmaker to chair the main competition jury at Cannes. He won Best Director at the festival for "Decision to Leave" in 2022.

Park addressed the question of politics in cinema directly. "I don't believe that films only with political statements are great films", he said, "but just because a film is political, it doesn't mean it's an enemy of art". He described his approach to the competition as welcoming political content "without prejudice".

The full jury: Moore, "Nomadland" director Chloé Zhao, actor Stellan Skarsgård, actress Ruth Negga, director Laura Wandel, actor Isaach De Bankolé, director Diego Céspedes, and screenwriter Paul Laverty.

Moore's position sits at the pragmatic end of a debate that runs through every institution in Hollywood. The Creators Coalition, founded by Oscar winners Daniel Kwan and Sian Heder, has taken the harder line: no accommodation without training data compensation and full creator protections. The Cannes decision to bar AI generated films from the Official Competition established the festival's structural boundary. Moore's "work with it" argument is not a fringe view. It is, for now, one of the two dominant responses to a question that Hollywood has not answered. Follow the tools at the center of this debate in the AI FILMS Studio video workspace.

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Sources

Variety | The Wrap | The Hollywood Reporter | Deadline | Far Out Magazine | AV Club