Danny Boyle Faces Backlash Over AI Use in 'Ink'

RadarOnline and AOL report Danny Boyle is being slammed after confirming roughly 30 seconds of AI-generated footage appears in his new film 'Ink'.

Danny Boyle, the 69-year-old Trainspotting director, has confirmed that about 30 seconds of generative AI material appears in his new film *Ink*, radaronline.com and AOL report. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Boyle said: "There's about 30 seconds of it in our movie where we animate a couple of old photographs. Oh, and there's some mice. It's very good for animals, and we had some mice that run around The Sun newsroom." The AI was used to animate old photographs and create the mice sequence. The disclosure emerged after speculation that AI had helped reanimate archival photographs of the Kray twins and Margaret Thatcher.

The backlash centers on what an industry source described to RadarOnline as a striking contradiction: Boyle is simultaneously warning about AI replacing journalists while calling it a useful filmmaking tool. The source said audiences associate Boyle with human creativity and experimentation, and critics will ask why those images and animals could not have been created by artists using established visual-effects techniques. The insider added that opponents fear normalization of AI "starts with precisely these apparently minor uses," and that even limited use crosses a line for audiences with little tolerance for generative AI.

Speaking at the Venice Film Festival earlier in the week, Boyle warned that tech giants' AI could replace journalism, asking whether an AI journalist "will speak truth to the power that created it." But he defended AI as a valuable filmmaking tool when used responsibly. "It doesn't really matter what I think about AI. It matters what 20-year-olds think about it," he said, adding that actors should be paid if their performances or likenesses are replaced with "some kind of AI embodiment."

*Ink*, adapted by James Graham from his own stage play, charts Rupert Murdoch's 1969 purchase of The Sun and the rise of British tabloid journalism, with Guy Pearce as Murdoch, Jack O'Connell as editor Larry Lamb, and Claire Foy as Jules Davies. The AI controversy lands as the film seeks audiences, and as the industry debate shifts, per the RadarOnline source, from whether AI can produce convincing images to what happens to the people who would previously have been paid to create them.