Seth Rogen arrived at the Cannes Film Festival this week with a hand-drawn animated film and a blunt verdict on artificial intelligence: people who reach for AI when writing scripts have no business calling themselves writers.
Speaking to media outlet Brut on the Croisette, where he is promoting Tangles — director Leah Nelson’s animated feature about a young woman whose mother receives an Alzheimer’s diagnosis — the The Studio creator said that if anyone is thinking about using the technology to help create a script, they simply “shouldn’t be a writer” and might want to try another occupation.
“I don’t understand what it’s supposed to do,” Rogen said when asked about AI in filmmaking. “Every time I see a video on Instagram that’s like, ‘Hollywood is cooked,’ what follows is the most stupid dog shit I’ve ever seen in my life. And if your instinct is to use AI and not go through that process — you shouldn’t be a writer, because you’re not writing.”
He went further, framing AI assistance as a sign that someone lacks the fundamental desire to do the job. “The idea of a tool that makes me write less is not appealing to me, because I like writing,” he said.
This is not the first time Rogen has spoken out on the issue. During the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, he called the idea of AI writing television and movies “horrifying,” and said the studios’ willingness to push for it made things even worse. His Cannes comments land as the debate has intensified across the entertainment industry, with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently updating its rules to crack down on the use of AI as it pertains to acting performances eligible for Oscar nominations.
Rogen’s remarks also arrive in lockstep with a sharp wave of anti-AI sentiment from other prominent creators. Grammy-winning producer Jack Antonoff posted a lengthy statement on Instagram this week declaring that there is “nothing more embarrassing than considering there is a way to optimize that holy process” of music creation, calling AI music creators “godless whores.” Antonoff told those “gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art” to “drive right off that cliff.”
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Tangles itself carries an implicit argument against AI — every frame was hand-drawn. The film earned a seven-minute ovation at its Cannes premiere. Producer Lauren Miller Rogen, Seth Rogen’s wife, said she felt a personal connection to the story, as her own mother also suffered from Alzheimer’s. The voice cast includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Sarah Silverman, Bowen Yang, Wanda Sykes, Abbi Jacobson, Beanie Feldstein, and Samira Wiley.
The timing of Rogen’s comments places them squarely within a broader industry reckoning. At Cannes, screenwriter Paul Laverty told attendees that “we shouldn’t let these tech-bro billionaires who are mostly right-wing libertarians dictate how we live our lives,” while other figures have taken a more pragmatic stance, arguing that AI tools are now too embedded to ignore.
Rogen, for his part, showed no interest in that middle ground.
