SXSW audiences boo pro-AI presentation during festival screenings

Attendees at SXSW have booed a presentation/sizzle reel which focused solely on being pro-artificial intelligence.

Conversations about artificial intelligence have been occurring all throughout this year’s South By Southwest festival but many festival goers who are there for the film and TV presentations specifically have not been pleased with the idea.

A daily sizzle reel that was shared at the screenings of The Fall Guy and Immaculate at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas on Tuesday (March 12) left the audience booing at the screens over the pro-AI reel that was played before the films.

Entire crowd booing the pro A.I. pre-roll at the “Fall Guy” premiere. #SXSW2024

— Siddhant Adlakha (@SiddhantAdlakha) March 12, 2024

The incredibly pro-AI sizzle reel today at #SXSW being loudly booed and told to fuck off by roughly a thousand people in the Paramount was heartwarming. Read the room, people.

— Brian Tallerico (@Brian_Tallerico) March 12, 2024

Every day at #sxsw, there is a pre-show bumper of clips from the previous day’s conference speakers.
Tuesday featured multiple people talking about AI. All were variations of “AI is the future, get used to it.”
In multiple screenings, those sentiments were roundly booed.

— Mark Olsen (@IndieFocus) March 13, 2024

OpenAI’s VP of consumer product and head of ChatGPT Peter Deng appeared toward the end of the reel and took time to declare on camera, “I actually think that AI fundamentally makes us more human,” which earned the loudest booing of the reel.

Signal Fire’s consumer VC and former TechCrunch editor Josh Constine also appeared in the reel, with a soundbite that said: “SXSW has always been the digital culture makers, and I think if you look out into this room, you can see that AI is a culture.”

Deng took part in the “AI and Humanity’s Co-evolution with Open AI’s Head of Chat GPT” session on Monday March 11 which was moderated by Constine.

Elsewhere, author Sandy Carter – who wrote the book The Tiger and the Rabbit: Harnessing the Power of the AI and Blockchain for Business Success – also received criticism for her position on AI, telling her panel audience: “You know your business is going to be disrupted — and so you need to stop resisting it and start learning,” (per Variety).

Other loud groans occurred at the “Storyworlds, Hour Blue & Amplifying Humanity Ethically with AI” panel: after Magic Leap’s founder Rony Abovitz told he crowd: “Be one of those people who leverages AI, don’t be run over by it.”

In other SXSW news, Gruff Rhys became the latest artist to pull out of SXSW 2024 in solidarity with Palestine.

It was recently announced that all Irish bands booked have now pulled out of SXSW 2024 in solidarity.