Darren Aronofsky Is Not Afraid of AI
Not the end of filmmaking. Just the next evolution- if you care enough
We're in the era of gladiators filming influencer-style confessions in the Colosseum. Lip-synced, glistening, cinematic- the lighting is just right, the roar of lions perfectly mixed under the motivational monologue. Scroll a bit further, and you'll find a jaguar guiding two hikers to its injured mate like a jungle Lassie. It's all powered by Veo3, Google's powerful new text-to-video model. And it's everywhere.
Perfect, polished, uncanny - these AI-generated shorts are flooding the internet. They look incredible. But they also blur into sameness. What are we even calling them? AI shorts? Machine cinema? Veo3 reels? They're funny, surreal, sometimes beautiful- but also disposable.
Enter: Darren Aronofsky
Darren Aronofsky's Primordial Soup and Google DeepMind are partnering to explore AI's role in storytelling.
He doesn’t use AI to shortcut the process - he uses it to enrich it.
At Google's I/O keynote, Aronofsky was the creative figurehead of Veo3. His studio, Primordial Soup, is one of the first to explore how AI-generated video can elevate human storytelling rather than replace it. The short film Ancestra, directed by emerging filmmaker Eliza McNitt and produced by Aronofsky, is a powerful example. It tells the intimate story of a young woman born with a hole in her heart- blending live action with AI-generated microscopic imagery of the heart's interior.
That's the nuance.
It’s not gladiators, or jaguars, or fantasy poodles winning wars. It’s deeply human themes amplified by new tools.
In this case, Veo3's ability to visualise the unseen - blood vessels, emotion, and cellular memory - makes it an extraordinary companion to the story.
Aronofsky's involvement makes perfect sense. Back in 2006, he created The Fountain, blending macro-lens imagery with cosmic allegory. With Noah, his team built an actual physical model of the ark and its menagerie. He's always pushed the envelope regarding production techniques and technology.
(I remember this well—we worked on the websites for The Fountain and Noah at Hi-ReS!. For The Fountain, Protozoa's macro imagery gave us a visual language we could build around. For Noah, the production team built a full-scale, three-level Ark from pine and foam, sealed with pitch- an actual set at Long Island's Planting Fields. But when the 3D scan data they sent us proved too noisy to use, we rebuilt the entire Ark digitally at Hi-ReS! (https://hi-res.net) - in collaboration with Ars Thanea (www.arsthanea.com). We worked from physical references and extended it back to scale. > That level of craft was the baseline.)
It's no surprise that Darren is now working with Veo3.
But he doesn't use AI to shortcut the process; instead, he enriches it. Like VFX, CGI, or even editing itself, AI is another instrument in the orchestra of cinematic craft.
However, the other layer that excites me is mentorship. Through Primordial Soup, he's not just playing with tools - he's handing them to new voices. Ancestra isn't a proof-of-concept. It's a proof of collaboration. A new generation of filmmakers, raised on both analogue emotion and digital possibility.
This is where I see Veo3 having meaning. And yes, there's a place for the other side too: the absurdist shorts, the micro spectacles, the strange made-up rescues that flood our feeds. They're part of this moment, and they're fun. It's a new visual playground, and there's joy in that.
But it's when these tools are used with emotional weight and creative intent that something shifts.
Not as a gimmick for hyperreal clickbait, but as a bridge between the human impulse to tell stories and the emerging capacity of machines to visualise what we could never film.
So, no, Veo3 won't replace screenwriters, directors, or DPs. But it will expose the lazy, the copy-paste, and the formulaic.
As with every major evolution in filmmaking- sound, colour, digital, now AI- the ones who thrive will be those who care irrationally, obsess wildly, and wield the tools with soul.
Darren gets it. Eliza gets it.
And if we stay intentional and open, we might get a bit weirder, more microscopic and mythic.
Because the heart still beats at the centre of every story. Even when you can now zoom inside it.
— Alexandra
Unwritten
Where I think out loud: personal essays, conversations and small experiments on why I write, what I notice, and how we keep making work that matters. Notes from the side of the page—drafts, doubts, and little sparks.
Reflections on design, storytelling, and human futures by Alexandra Jugović. © 2025
Credits: Clip at the top taken from the official trailer of Ancestra - youtube link below:
→ Watch the official trailer and and explore AI and Filmmaking with Darren Aronofsky’s Primordial Soup and Google DeepMind
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