A softer image of AI? This Google-backed film aims to change the narrative

A man mourns the loss of his dead celebrity mom, who unexpectedly appears before him as a hologram in his childhood home, singing and strumming a guitar.

The touching scene is from a new short film called “Sweetwater” that has an unlikely backer: Google.

Amid all the hand-wringing over artificial intelligence and the potential threat it poses to Hollywood and the creative community, the tech giant is looking to reframe the narrative with a 21-minute film that examines whether technology can help humans process grief in this new era of the digital age.

Google set the stage for that discussion with a glitzy event at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Monday night. Actors, filmmakers, producers and entertainment workers packed a Los Angeles theater to watch “Sweetwater,” starring Michael Keaton and Kyra Sedgwick.

Google commissioned “Sweetwater” with Santa Monica-based talent management firm Range Media Partners to explore the complex relationship between AI and humanity.

The Mountain View company has a vested interest in painting AI in a more favorable light. The YouTube owner is a major investor and partner in the AI firm Anthropic, which itself has been the target of lawsuits over accusations of copyright infringement in the arts. In addition to its partnership with Anthropic, Google is separately developing its own AI tools, including Gemini and Project Astra.

“The goal right now is not to specifically be selling their product,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “The goal right now is to be creating a world where people are comfortable supporting AI, using it with no fear, with no critical qualms whatsoever, like we dove into social media … I think that’s been a tougher task with AI.”

Depictions of the digital afterlife in shows such as “Black Mirror” can feel bleak, foreshadowing a dystopian future where people get resurrected from the grave as chatbots and robots.

In “Sweetwater,” a hologram of the deceased mom tugs at the heartstrings of viewers, hinting at the possibility that AI could be used to digitally preserve a loved one or provide comfort to those who are grieving.

“It just poses the question, I haven’t even really resolved it for myself,” said Sean Douglas, Keaton’s son and the film’s writer, in an interview. “If presented with this possibility, would you want that — and what are the parameters of how real an experience like this can be?”

The rise of artificial intelligence has prompted conversations and criticism about the impact of the technology, including how it could change the way people experience the world.

Hollywood is reckoning with similar questions as storytellers bring up fears about copyright violations, compensation and the risk of AI competing with actors, writers and artists for work. Technology has made it possible to bring back actors, writers and musicians from the dead in digital form. Some people already use chatbots like therapists.

Tech companies such as Google that provide AI assistants and products to generate images, text and video market their tools as a way to help creative people, not replace them.

Google’s AI products don’t appear in the “Sweetwater” film, although the company does have a holographic 3D communication technology called Google Beam that uses AI.

Consumers are split on whether AI will help or harm creativity, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. Roughly 53% think AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively while 16% say increased use of AI will make this better. Others aren’t sure or thought it would be neither better nor worse.

Neil Parris, head of strategic content partnerships for Google’s film and television 100 Zeros initiative, said as people see a variety of AI stories — some less dystopian — it could expand how they think about the use of technology.

“It’s meant to empower human creativity,” said Parris, who executive produced the short film. “It will evolve and shape the jobs that people have in the creative process as any technology has over the course of the history of filmmaking.”

“Sweetwater” first premiered in September in New York but its distribution hasn’t been finalized . The filmmakers said they’re also open to making it longer.

The panel discussion about the film also shined a spotlight on the tension between humans and machines.

“I was excited about the prospect of an actor playing AI instead of AI playing an actor. I thought that was a good thing,” said Sedgwick as the audience applauded.

Earlier this year, many Hollywood actors were outraged when the creator behind an AI-generated character, Tilly Norwood, announced Norwood would soon be signed to a talent agency. The AI character could be used to act in films and TV shows, roles that could directly compete against human actors.

Keaton, who also directed the film, said that while he isn’t the most tech savvy, curiosity and the opportunity to work with his son led him to direct and star in the film, but it’s not meant to be a commercial for AI.

The “Google folks” were “great,” he said on stage Monday, but the actor also expressed concerns about the impact of AI on jobs and equity.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, also added AI tools to its platform that train on the work of its video creators. Some creators have expressed fear that this could make it easier for others to copy their work and creative styles.

“You don’t replace anybody in the industry. I’m very old-fashioned about people and employment and work and being protected,” Keaton said in an interview. “And at the same time, I find this stuff really interesting and curious.”

While the film is about AI, the filmmakers intentionally didn’t use AI to create digital actors.

“We didn’t want to make it murky where, oh, we’re using AI, and we’re talking about it,” Douglas said.

One benefit of working with Google, he said, was the company gave access to researchers and their tech workers to learn more about the digital afterlife.

Jed Brubaker, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who has researched the benefits and risks of AI afterlives with Google DeepMind, worked with the filmmakers as they sorted out the design of the “generative ghost” of the mom. In “Sweetwater,” the mom’s hologram gets projected from an orb.

“These are all choices we get to make with generative ghosts as well, and they’ll have different impacts on how people experience and interact with them,” Brubaker said. “In the same way that reading your grandfather’s journal is different than looking through a photo album of photos of your grandfather.”

Already, Google said after the screening, people in the entertainment industry expressed interest in working with the company on future film projects.

“Our fear of machines has been massively fanned by Hollywood over many decades,” said Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. “You could say Hollywood is picking up societal fears.”