Seth Rogen: Writers who rely on AI shouldn't be writers
Seth Rogen said writers using AI to avoid the creative process have chosen the wrong profession. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, Rogen promoted his new animated film Tangles alongside his wife Lauren Miller and author Sarah Leavitt.
"If your instinct is to use AI and not go through that process, you shouldn't be a writer, right?" Rogen said. "Because then you're not writing. Go do something else."
Rogen said he finds no appeal in tools designed to reduce writing work. "The whole idea of a tool that makes me write less is not appealing to me because I like writing," he said.
The creative process can't be automated
Leavitt, a creative writing professor and author of the graphic memoir that inspired Tangles, said AI cannot replicate the creative process itself. "You're not just creating a finished product. You're going through the process of figuring it out, which we did for 10 years," she said.
Miller emphasized that emotional experience-not technology-shaped the film's authenticity. "I don't know how you could feed in what we went through," she said. "Whatever is inside us that got in there while we were caring for our mothers in this painful way translates into the fact that when the line was drawn by a hand, that hand was moved by someone who felt emotions instead of a programme."
The film follows an artist who returns to 1990s San Francisco and discovers her mother developing Alzheimer's disease. Leavitt drew on her own experience losing her mother to the condition.
For more on how writers are approaching AI for Writers, or to understand the technology behind these tools, see our guide to Generative AI and LLM.
Your membership also unlocks:
