Somebody once told me, AI is gonna ruin me, I aint the sharpest tool in the shed… Well, not quite. So called AI (a buzz word that mostly refers to synthetic media generated by machine learning models) has gained enormous amount of hype in the last years. Silicon Valley preaches that storytelling can be fully automated through scripts generated with ChatGPT, infinite livestreams of AI slop will be the future and all jobs will be lost because we don’t need no human intervention anymore. While it is actually reshaping the ways companies are approaching media production, is this a good way to tell stories? With a highlight on film, we will analyze the ways generative tools are being used (and misused) in the last five years for storytelling. It’s mostly just overly confident tech bros who want to “democratize creativity” while having no clue what actual creators do. However, we will mostly focus on the few well-crafted uses of generative tools, where the limitations are embraced and AI-native stories are being told. Tipping the toe in some good use cases, we will also be discussing some of the critical theories regarding bias, datasets and authorship. By learning the landscape of generative media in the arts and film scene, you are invited to create your own project that uses generative tools. While the focus will be time-based media, you are not bound by it and can freely explore how these tools can be used in your own way of storytelling. A big portion of the class will be hands-on for learning how to use image and video generative models. Depending on the class’s practical knowledge, we will learn everything from the basics to the more fine-grained nuances on using such tools. A 3 days workshop might be organized in the second or third weekend of May for learning the tools through a 48-hours film production. By the end of the course, your projects will be presented in a class exhibition.