Soderbergh’s Lennon Documentary Debuts at Cannes With AI

A documentary built from surviving audio of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s last recorded interview premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and its use of generative artificial intelligence to create imagery for parts of the conversation has revived a broader debate over transparency and the role of AI in filmmaking.

The film, John Lennon The Last Interview, directed by Steven Soderbergh, draws on a two-hour interview that Lennon and Ono gave on Dec. 8, 1980, from their home in New York’s Dakota Apartments. At the time, the couple was promoting their album Double Fantasy, and they spoke at length about their relationship and Lennon’s post-Beatles life, according to material included in the production. That same day, photographer Annie Leibovitz also took the portrait of a Lennon wrapped around Ono, images that have since become closely associated with the couple’s public narrative from that period.

Soderbergh said he faced a central challenge in turning the interview into a film. With limited existing footage to match the audio, he relied on a combination of visual methods, but he said there were gaps in which he could not simply “visualize much of the film,” leaving sections that...