After nearly a year’s delay, the AI International Film Festival will finally see the light of day.

The event, which will feature film screenings and social gatherings, will run from May 12-14, at the Redstone 8 Cinema, with a pre-festival panel discussion and welcoming party on May 11 in Salt Lake City, said Executive Director Bert Holland. (See accompanying schedule).

And thanks to a generous donation from an anonymous donor, passes for all the screenings, gatherings and discussions are free, according to Holland.

---

---

“The donor has watched some of our segments in the news and press and is very interested and concerned about AI and ChatGPT4 and its yet-to-be-determined impact on our lives,” he said. “The donor wants to provide an opportunity for anyone who wishes to attend our panel and festival to be able to do so.”

On the other hand as machines become more intelligent and powerful, you have the issue that we need to make sure they are controlled.” Bert Holland, AI International Film Festival executive director

To access these free exclusive passes, visit aifilmfest.org, and click on the exclusive passes tab and enter the promo code, PARKRECORD.

---

---

The promo also includes passes to the May 11 panel, and gives 20% off on all VIP passes, streaming passes and AI International Film Festival merchandise, according to Holland.

If attendees want VIP tickets, those will need to be purchased separately and can be found on the website aifilmfest.eventive.org/welcome, he said.

Holland is happy to finally see the film festival become a reality.

“Our first festival event was planned at the University of Utah’s Post Theater, but the U decided to change the function of the building into a COVID testing center,” he said. “Once we lost the venue, we decided to move the festival to the next year, and looked a venues in Park City, because of the reputation it has in the film community.”

Holland and his staff looked at various venues that included the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. 

“It was like the story of the Three Bears,” he said. “Some venues were too big, like the Eccles Center, and some venues were too small. Then we found the Redstone 8 Cinemas and it was just right. We love working with them. It’s family owned, and they are very flexible.”

The holdup, however, proved beneficial, said Communications Director Madelaine Lamah.

“It allowed us to get more submissions, more great films and a great location,” she said.

The in-person screening schedule features 42 films from 20 countries, while the streaming lineup will include 57 films, Lamah said.

“We received 150 submissions, and many came from Europe, Canada, Chile and South Africa,” she said. “We also have strong representation from the United States.”

Films were selected on different merits, Holland said.

“They had to have something to say that was interesting or of value,” he said. “Or the films needed to be entertaining or inspiring. Or they had to have engaging information. We have a bunch of documentaries that really give you a glimpse of the future of AI.”

Festival organizers also wanted to see how creative the filmmakers could get while focusing on the subject of artificial intelligence, Lamah said.

“Because AI is a new concept for the general public, we wanted to see what people would create with AI or about AI,” she said.

One of Lamah’s favorite films is an animated short by Udesh Chetty called “Red Gaia.”

“It came out of South Africa, and the filmmaker put in a lot of work and research,” she said. “It’s about the last surviving AI or humanoid on Mars and their attempt to revive life. It’s in Sanskrit and has a little bit of Tibetan.” 

Holland has been thinking about the idea for an AI film festival for a while.

“My background is in engineering and behavioral sciences, and I lived and worked in Europe for most of my life,” he said. “In my prior position, I helped organize the sponsorship of the TED talks and made them available online for the general public. And the speakers’ ideas motivated me to find out more about AI and engage myself about the subject.”

Holland founded an AI project in 2017, with the goal of educating the public about how artificial intelligence impacts society.

“As an outgrowth of that, in December 2021 we started a film festival competition on Filmfreeway.com,” he said. “We got a lot of these great films, some of them brilliant. And we didn’t expect that. We were surprised at the quality and depth of thinking that was going into these films. So we decided to give it a larger footprint.”

Holland’s fascination with AI centers around intelligent technology.

“The idea that machines can complement humans and extend our capabilities and serve as resources for us is one side of the coin,” he said. “On the other hand as machines become more intelligent and powerful, you have the issue that we need to make sure they are controlled and things don’t get out of whack by virtue of that power.”

Lamah’s interest in AI comes from the human side of technology.

“I feel as powerful as AI can be, it is a human creation that we keep amplifying it and making it better as we go along,” she said. “It’s fascinating that we, as humans, were able to create something this powerful.”

That and other ideas will be discussed during the pre-festival panel, “AI, GPT-4 and Human Future,” at 6:30 p.m. on May 11, in the  Architecture Auditorium Rm. 127 of the University of Utah, Holland said. 

“We’re not in the position to divulge who will be part of the panel, yet, but we’ll have University of Utah faculty and AI experts and we will be focusing on the questions, ‘Where is AI taking us?’ ‘What is going on right now?’ ‘What can we expect in five or 10 years?’ and ‘What roles can creators and filmmakers take in helping educate the public in the direction we’re headed?'” he said.

In addition to panel discussions, screenings and socials, the AI International Film Festival is also running two contests, according to Lamah.

“The first is open to all students,” she said. “They can submit a 1- to 5-minute short film that uses AI or talks about AI, and their work will be judged and shown on the big screen at the end of the festival. There is over $1,000 in prize money as well.”

Students can visit filmfreeway.com/AIinternationalFilmFestival for information and to submit their entries.

The other contest, the ChatGPT, Bing, Bard Contest, is open to the public, and there are three categories, Lamah said.

• Have ChatGPT write a heartfelt letter to your mom for Mother’s Day.
• Let ChatGPT craft the perfect letter to your crush.
• Create your ideal dating profile using AI or ChatGPT for Tinder or any dating platform.

Contestants can use ChatGPT (chat.openai.com), Bing (bing.com/new) or Bard (bard.google.com) to create their entries, according to Lamah. 

“Submissions will be carefully evaluated by a panel of three well-qualified judges,” she said. “The top 5 in each category will receive VIP Couple passes to the AI International Film Festival, while the winners will earn a trophy in addition.”

Visit aifilmfest.org for rules.

Holland plans to make the AI International Film Festival a biannual event.

“One of the reasons why we want to do this festival twice a year is not only because technology is advancing so quickly, but also because society is evolving quickly,” he said. “I think we can expect machine intelligence will meet human levels quite soon. We’ve been using ChatGPT for press releases for a while now. And there is a light-years difference between the GPTP 4 that came out on the 18th of March and today’s ChatGPT-4. The one thing we can expect with artificial intelligence is change, more rapid change.”