Rachel Antell has worked in documentary filmmaking for 25 years, the last 15 as an archival producer — someone who sources historical photos or footage for a filmmaker from any number of primary sources, from TV news to snapshots to dusty old boxes of VHS tapes.
But in the last year and a half, the Berkeley resident had a new focus: trying to encourage documentary filmmakers to be careful about their use of generative AI so it doesn’t ruin the genre for good.
Antell is the co-founder of the Archival Producers Alliance, which last month published a set of guidelines for the transparent and ethical use of AI in documentaries. Her producing partner is Jennifer Petrucelli (they met at Stanford).
She sat down to talk about trust, technology and how to prevent the distortion of history.
J.: What started your interest in AI?
Rachel Antell: A year and a half ago, we were working on a documentary. There were some items that the director wanted to see that we were not able to find; that often happens. And then one day, we were in a meeting and we saw in the cut that there was a photo of this person. And we were like, “Oh, we weren’t able to find that. Where did you find that?” And they were like, “We didn’t — we created it.”
I could not tell that it was created by AI. To me, this was completely believable as a photo of exactly what they were looking for from that time period.
So we asked “Are you going to disclose that this is not a photo of this person?” And they said “No, we’ve been talking to lawyers, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any actual law saying we need to do that.”
Obviously, this raised a lot of alarms for us.
What were you worried about?
AI pushes the line of whether or not an audience member can trust the filmmaker. When you break that trust, then that puts everything else in your film into question and then, more broadly, everything else in the documentary genre into question. Transparency is a very big piece of what we’re advocating for.
Another thing is, you may have some kind of top-of-show language saying, “This film uses generative AI.” That’s good. But once something is lifted out of the film and separated from that disclosure, then it’s meaningless. People are going to forever look at that photo and say, “Oh, that was that person doing that thing at that time.”
Where this intersects with Jewish history is so interesting. For example, the bulwark against Holocaust denial is the robust documentary sources.
It’s terrifying, absolutely. I think any piece of vulnerable history like the Holocaust is going to be much more at risk. At a certain point people just aren’t going to believe media in any way. It could all potentially be up for grabs if there aren’t safeguards. There are people working to create safeguards, but it’s like an arms race between the safeguards and the technology. Once these things make their way into the historical record, it’s very, very hard to undo.
Why would a documentary filmmaker even consider using AI?
The two big issues that every documentary filmmaker has are not enough money and not enough time. Especially not enough money. And then generative AI comes in from the ether and lands and answers all your problems.
Is there ever a case for using it?
There have been some really beautiful, elegant and important cases of documentary filmmakers using generative AI. Two of the best that I’ve seen are “Another Body” [a 2023 film on deepfake porn] and “Welcome to Chechnya” [a 2020 film about LGBT discrimination in the country]. They both use generative AI to protect the identity of people for whom being in the film would present a real risk to their lives
What is the end goal for the group and the guidelines?
It was clear that something needed to be done to sort of rein it in and put up some safeguards around the documentary form to ensure its continued existence.
We talked to lawyers, we talked to AI technologists, we talked to film scholars, to documentary filmmakers, to insurers, and tried to understand what all the issues were on a technical level, a legal level, an ethical level. And we decided to call on the documentary ethics that the community has always relied on.
One of the biggest messages we have for documentary filmmakers is slow down, take a breath. Don’t just run out and embrace the technology, but rather think through the ethics you’ve always had around making your films.