AI ON THE STAND: WHAT REALITY WILL WE CHOOSE

AI has transformed the media landscape, redefining how stories are developed, produced and experienced. For documentary storytellers, whose currency is truth, transparency and trust, the challenge is navigating the growing fault line between creative opportunity and ethical risk.

Within the field of documentary, AI’s wide-reaching implications affect every stage of the production pipeline, from drafting funding applications, to animating archival material, simulating voiceover and deepfaking participants to protect their anonymity. These tools can offer genuine creative and practical solutions, but they also raise urgent questions about consent, manipulation, authorship, bias and authenticity.

In this session led by Lexi Landsman (BBC Studios ANZ), a panel of industry leaders, creatives and technologists will move beyond hype and fear to interrogate the real, lived implications of AI in documentary storytelling. Where is the line between innovation and distortion? What responsibility do filmmakers have to audiences in an AI-mediated world? Is there an ethical framework emerging or are we still writing the rules in real time? And ultimately, in an era where reality itself can be generated with the click of a button, what does “truth” mean now?

 

Image credit: Freepik