‘Late Night With the Devil’ Directors Confirm They Used A.I. After Major Backlash 

The indie horror movie Late Night With the Devil is having a rough premiere week as people on social media are upset over the directors’ usage of art generated by artificial intelligence.

Directed and written by Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes, the movie follows fictional 1970s late-night talk show host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) as he interviews a survivor of a Satanic church’s mass suicide.

The situation, portrayed through found footage, turns into a hellish event as the subject conjures the devil.

Conversations about A.I. in Hollywood are nothing new. Last year’s Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes heavily revolved around the topic and the contract resolutions for both included A.I. protections for artists. 

SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher revisited the topic during her speech at the 2024 Oscar Awards, saying, “A.I. will entrap up in a matrix where none of us know what’s real.”

The backlash against Late Night With the Devil was spurred by a Letterboxd review, published on Mar. 19, that reads: “There’s AI all over this in the cutaways and ‘we’ll be right back’ network messages. For this reason, I can’t enjoy the amazing performances and clever ending.” 

The reviewer, Based Gizmo, continued, “It actually feels insulting when that skeleton message shows up repeatedly, like the filmmakers don’t give a shit and want to let you know that you’ll accept blatant AI in your ’70s period piece. Don’t let this be the start of accepting this shit in your entertainment.”

The discourse spread through social media with many calling for a boycott of the new release. “Late Night With the Devil using AI in place of artists is pathetic but then again so is the art it generated,” wrote critic Alicia Gilstorf. 

Another shared, “We aren’t devaluing the work of the cast and crew of Late Night with the Devil by criticizing the use of AI. Whoever decided to use AI instead of hiring an artist did that.”

One Twitter user ran a poll to gauge whether moviegoers would be boycotting the horror flick and, out of 243 votes, 25.5% said they’d be boycotting and 28.4% expressed interest in pirating the movie as a form of protest. 

The directors admitted to using AI in the movie but downplayed it to “three still images” in an exclusive statement to Variety. 

“In conjunction with our amazing graphics and production design team, all of whom worked tirelessly to give this film the 70s aesthetic we had always imagined, we experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film,” the directors wrote. “We feel incredibly fortunate to have had such a talented and passionate cast, crew and producing team go above and beyond to help bring this film to life. We can’t wait for everyone to see it for themselves this weekend.”

Prior to the controversy, Late Night With the Devil received high acclaim and currently has a 99% approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes with many praising Dastmalchian’s performance and the story’s uniqueness despite being part of a saturated genre. 

Only time will tell if the backlash will harm the movie’s box office performance. Conversations surrounding AI are much less divisive than the long-going conversations regarding movie’s over-usage of CGI technology. It should be noted that normalizing AI-generated art is a push towards removing artists from the equation altogether, rather than providing a user-based resource, like CGI, to achieve designs and effects that would be impossible to achieve otherwise. It’s unfortunate that an indie movie’s release — and perhaps the new filmmakers’s reputation — is being spoiled by the ongoing controversy; however, it’s an overdue conversation that seems just to be beginning.

If a team of filmmakers felt influenced to use AI art in their movie and couldn’t foresee the backlash it would generate, especially this soon after the historical strikes, then clearly the ongoing conversations aren’t being heard.

Late Night With the Devil will be released in theaters on March 22, and will be streaming on Shudder on April 19.