This Film Is 'Human Made'

It began with a Christmas commercial for Coca-Cola. Polar bears, reindeer, smiling people, all made by generative AI. Filmmaker William Grave read the backlash from his industry on LinkedIn, but they largely dismissed the advertisement itself. It looks terrible. That’s not the future. As an experiment, Grave put the commercial in front of his father and asked his opinion. His father was confused. It’s an okay Christmas ad. They watched it again. And again.

“We watched it five times,” Grave said almost two years later, “and he just couldn’t tell. He just couldn’t tell that it was AI generated [...] and that’s when the penny really dropped.”

In April, Grave and co-founder Eric Gruber officially launched The Human Made Mark, an independent certification that verifies no human artists were replaced by generative AI in the making of a film. To receive the mark, producers submit their film and production material, like call sheets and a credits list, to an online portal for review. They also sign a legal declaration that no artists were replaced by AI (enforced through a £5000 fine). If approved, the result is akin to a Fairtrade label or BBFC rating: an official stamp of public transparency declaring that a film is human made. Like Fairtrade and the BBFC, the service has a fee, with tiers ranging from £25 for short films to £2,760 (the BBFC’s price) for big-budget features. The goal: “a premium for human made work in our industry.”

Since sharing the project at film festivals a year ago, Grave has watched perceptions shift rapidly. “Back then people looked at me curiously,” he said, “like, ‘Oh, I’m not sure AI is going to affect the film industry’ [...] Now I get lots of high-fives.” Alongside those high-fives, this year he’s seen support from Guillermo del Toro, collaboration with Bridgerton’s Ruby Barker, partnerships with directors’ guilds, and, in the eyes of the film students he meets, “that glimmer of hope.”

From a marketing perspective, Grave argues it’s a win-win: a verified way to evade, and even capitalise on, the mounting backlash against AI in film. It’s a view many have already assumed, as more new releases add ‘no AI’ statements to their end credits — statements Grave kindly dismisses as “marking your own homework.”

But such opposition is far from unanimous, and Grave says he’s only become more militant as AI companies buy more chips in the film industry. He cites Meta’s sponsorship of Cannes, the non-stories he finds every day in The Hollywood Reporter, the million-dollar AI film awards he keeps seeing online. He describes a disturbing moment at a recent festival in which a talk on AI turned out to be a respected cinematographer “just prompting into Runway and saying, ‘Now you can make a video of a woman fighting a crocodile.’” Grave left early.

“I've witnessed these moments where you can see people have been bought,” he said, calling such endorsements antithetical to the collaborative nature of film and “pulling the ladder away from young people.”

Meanwhile, he asserts they aren’t luddites. “We understand that AI can be a tool that helps artists,” he explained, “where we draw the line is replacing artists.” That includes background actors and CGI artists; it doesn’t include any and all usage of AI. This is the central distinction behind the mark, and the reason for the name. “A ‘No-AI’ label doesn’t work in film [...] everything has some sort of AI software. That’s why you need a broader term like ‘human made.’”

In this sense, Grave distinguishes the mark as a positive enterprise: a celebration of human artistry, not a witch hunt. Although he finds the phrase ‘AI filmmaker’ disingenuous, he has no hate for the curious (not that it matters: “if you make a film with AI, you don’t need our support”). But the ethical issues don’t escape him either. “We know generative technology [...] has scraped the artwork of the world. [...] It’s stolen from artists.” The conversation might sound very different, he argues, if AI companies requested permission and offered compensation to artists for their work. Not to mention the water usage, which reminds him of Mad Max: Fury Road. 

Nonetheless, public opinion keeps Grave optimistic, so long as audiences can make informed decisions. He has big hopes for his mark (“my ambition is that we do become that official international organization”), but it’s a small enterprise for now. He still runs their social media. They’re considering considering a Kickstarter, and hope to launch a ‘Hire a Human Fund’ as a lottery for certified films (“we’re trying to get a famous actor attached to that”). As of our conversation, Grave says he hasn’t taken a day off all year, but he’s waiting until Christmas to slow down. Still, he describes the job as an honour and the films he reviews as an inspiration, including one animated film called The Piano, which “made me cry; it’s such a beautiful film.”

Back in April, Grave and Gruber celebrated their launch in Pech Merle, France, at the site of the famous 29,000-year-old cave paintings. During a tour, he learned the paintings were created by teams of people, some of whom would hold makeshift lanterns to light the walls. It reminded him of a film set and made him emotional.

Illustration by Beck Xu Ying