One of the elements that makes Guillermo del Toro’s work — including one of 2025’s best films, Frankenstein — so impactful is his adherence to largely man-made practical effects. So, it makes sense that del Toro isn’t keen on using generative AI in art, saying that it “vandalizes the fact that art without pain is illustration.”
Speaking with Consequence for our 2025 Filmmaker of the Year feature, del Toro noted that he’s not flatly against AI, pointing to things like law, engineering, and chemistry as fields where AI could potentially “render something great.” But that’s due to those fields “finite number” of algorithmic data points, such as laws and case studies, or “nodes in an anatomical part.”
“I don’t know enough about those fields to have an opinion,” he says, adding, “To call appropriation of an art form through examples that were done by humans, and then call it generational, [that] is what I don’t conceive. I think there may be cases in which scientists and practitioners of any discipline raised their hand and said, ‘Could you give us AI?’ Maybe. I don’t think any artist raised their hand and said, ‘Could you get us AI?’ I don’t think so. I may be completely wrong. I’m willing to accept it, but I cannot think of an example. And I think that it sort of vandalizes the fact that art without pain is illustration.”
del Toro expresses that this goes beyond filmmaking, and points specifically towards music. “I think the real barrier is if a society ends up making songs written by AI thrive, then that society without a doubt deserves songs written by AI,” he says. “I don’t think that will happen. I think that you listen to Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and you know John Lennon lost his mother to a traffic accident. You listen to [Bob] Dylan and you know that Dylan crossed the chasm between folk and rock had his own peril — meaning this music doesn’t come without the life and the biography and the struggles… If you remove any of that, then it’s illustrative art, and illustrative of what? Something not lived.”
For the filmmaker, this thought process “comes full circle” in the themes of Frankenstein. “I think that it’s not anti-science, it’s anti-lack of analysis,” he explains. “What it says is, ‘Could we think of the consequences before the quote-unquote great idea?’ And that is articulated in the movie by Mia [Goth]’s character, Elizabeth, who says, ‘This is what happens [when] ideas are implemented by fools.’ You know, you can be a bright, brilliant, this or a brilliant [that] and still be humanly very stupid. And I don’t count myself as an exception. I fight for my right to be fallible, stupid, and human. I like it. And I think that sometimes the great solutions of humanity come from that fallibility. And sometimes the great calamities of humanity, most of the time, come from the desire of infallibility.”
Read everything Guillermo del Toro had to say about AI, practical effects, and how Frankenstein could be the end of his cinematic exploration of father figures by reading our full Filmmaker of the Year interview. You can also check out the rest of our 2025 Annual Report for lists including the best movies and TV shows of the year, and interviews with the likes of KPop Demon Hunters directors Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans.
