![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2-the-last-interview-john-lennon-800x420.jpg\")
\u00a9 Yoko Ono Lennon and Nishi Saimaru (via Cannes Film Festival) <\/p>\n \u00a9 Yoko Ono Lennon and Nishi Saimaru (via Cannes Film Festival) <\/p>\n
Director Steven Soderbergh has revealed how he embraced using AI-generated images in his new documentary about John Lennon\u2019s final interview. <\/p>\n
Soderbergh\u2019s film John Lennon: The Last Interview<\/a> premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. The documentary captures the final in-depth conversation Lennon ever gave before he was assassinated. <\/p>\n On December 8, 1980, Lennon and Yoko Ono sat down with a small radio crew in their New York apartment to promote the release of their album Double Fantasy. The pair had not long posed for photographer Annie Leibovitz\u2019s famous portrait<\/a> of a naked Lennon wrapped around Ono. What followed during that interview with the former Beatles member was an unfiltered, wide-ranging discussion about music, politics, fatherhood, and life. Just hours later, Lennon was killed.<\/p>\n In his upcoming documentary, Soderberg turns those surviving tapes into a documentary and presents the complete Lennon interview for the first time. The interview is framed by reflections from people who were there at the time, presenting him at the peak of his creative and personal life and openly focused on a future he would tragically not live to see.<\/p>\n Soderberg, who is behind films such as Erin Brockovich and Traffic, has been sharing how he used AI generative technology in making the documentary. The director has explained that while the majority of John Lennon: The Last Interview is composed of archival footage and stills, he also uses a handful of fantasy images created by AI. <\/p>\n \u201cAI has been helpful in creating thematically surreal images that occupy a dream space rather than a literal space,\u201d Soderbergh says about the documentary in an interview with Filmmaker magazine.<\/a> <\/p>\n He adds: \u201cNinety percent of the visuals are archival stills, and 10 minutes, spread out over the 90-minute film, are these little pockets of images we created whenever they start talking philosophically.\u201d<\/p>\n In the same interview, Soderberg admits that the technology \u201cdesperately requires very close human supervision.\u201d But Soderberg also says he is planning on using \u201ca lot of AI\u201d for his next movie with Narcos star Wagner Moura set during the Spanish-American War.<\/p>\n \u2018Transparency is So Important\u2019 <\/p>\n In a further interview with AP News,<\/a> Soderbergh says that he has decided to be transparent about his use of AI in his filmmaking despite the technology still being extremely debated and controversial in Hollywood. <\/p>\n \u201cTransparency is so important (in) that the world outside of the creative context, we\u2019re not aware of the extent that this is being used and used to manipulate us. We don\u2019t know because they\u2019re not telling. We find out after, by accident, by some whistleblower.\u201d Soderbegh tells AP News. \u201cI\u2019m like my own whistleblower: \u2018This is what he\u2019s doing.’\u201d<\/p>\n Sodebergh\u2019s admission comes after Janice Min, a former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and CEO of Ankler Media, described what she sees as a culture of secrecy around AI use in Hollywood<\/a>. Filmmakers are facing growing scrutiny over the technology, particularly after The Brutalist was criticized for using AI to enhance Adrien Brody\u2019s Hungarian accent<\/a> \u2014 a controversy some commentators suggested may have hurt the film\u2019s momentum in the Best Picture Oscar race last year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing with AI right now in Hollywood: Everyone\u2019s lying just a little bit,\u201d says Min. \u201cStudios are lying about how much they\u2019re using it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a9 Yoko Ono Lennon and Nishi Saimaru (via Cannes Film Festival) Director Steven Soderbergh has revealed how he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[214190,80283,210398,2054,18,117,19,17,214191,327,214192,214193],"class_list":["post-490903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-aigeneratedimages","tag-aiimage","tag-cannesfilmfestival","tag-documentary","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-johnlennon","tag-movies","tag-thebeatles","tag-yokoono"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116596648611099830","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/the-last-interview-john-lennon-800x420.jpg\")
\u00a9 Kishin Shinoyama (via Cannes Film Festival) <\/p>\n