Seth Rogen fires back at Cannes: anyone using AI to write scripts shouldn’t be a writer
Artificial intelligence has become an unavoidable topic in any conversation about the creative future, and the 2025 Cannes Film Festival was no exception.
It was on that very stage that Seth Rogen, the screenwriter and producer behind the series The Studio, decided to be completely upfront about what he thinks of AI in the scriptwriting process. In an interview with Brut, published on Thursday during the festival, he dropped a line that quickly took over social media: anyone using AI to write scripts, in his view, simply shouldn’t be a writer.
Controversial? Maybe. But the statement touches on something that goes far beyond a personal opinion and raises real questions about creativity, professional identity, and the limits of automation within the entertainment industry. 🎬
What Seth Rogen actually said at Cannes
During his appearance at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Seth Rogen didn’t hold back. In the interview with Brut, he stated that using artificial intelligence to write a screenplay is, at its core, a contradiction in terms. For him, creative writing exists precisely because there is a human being on the other side, with real experiences, real failures, and a worldview that no algorithm can truly replicate.
The quote that went viral was straight to the point: if your instinct is to use AI and skip the creative process, you shouldn’t be a writer, because then you’re not actually writing.
Rogen also didn’t hide what he thinks about AI-generated content floating around the internet. He said that every time he sees a video on Instagram captioned with something about Hollywood being dead, what follows is, in his words, the dumbest thing he has ever seen in his life. That observation, despite its irreverent tone, carries an important point: the quality of AI-generated content is still far from replacing the depth and nuance that a human screenwriter can deliver.
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But the four-time Emmy winner went beyond criticism. He explained that he would never want to find a shortcut through the writing process, simply because he loves writing. For him, the idea of a tool that makes him write less has zero appeal. It is the process itself, with all its difficulties and frustrations, that gives meaning to the final result. And if someone doesn’t want to go through that process, they should consider another profession.
Context matters here. Seth Rogen isn’t just a famous name in Hollywood — he is someone who has spent decades refining the craft of screenwriting, comedy, and storytelling within an extremely competitive system. Movies like Superbad, Pineapple Express, and now the series The Studio reflect the trajectory of someone who deeply understands what it means to develop an authentic creative voice. When he speaks on this topic, he is not speaking from a place of technological ignorance, but from a well-grounded position on what makes writing truly valuable to audiences.
And the timing of this statement couldn’t be more relevant. Cannes 2025 took place at a moment when the entertainment industry is still processing the aftermath of the 2023 writers and actors strikes, where AI was one of the main points of tension during negotiations. Bringing this debate back to the center of the most prestigious film festival in the world was, at the very least, a necessary move. 💡
AI is already changing the rules of the game in Hollywood
Seth Rogen’s comments didn’t happen in a vacuum. Artificial intelligence has already started transforming the entertainment industry in very concrete ways, and institutional responses are ramping up.
A recent and quite significant example comes from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars. The institution announced updates to its rules and regulations that include stricter restrictions on AI usage, particularly regarding acting performances eligible for award nominations. This move shows that concern over artificial intelligence isn’t just backstage chatter at tech events — it is already shaping the policies of the most traditional and influential organizations in global cinema.
These regulatory changes signal that the industry is trying to find a balance between embracing new technologies and protecting the integrity of human work. The question is whether these rules will be able to keep up with the speed at which AI tools evolve and infiltrate every stage of the audiovisual production chain, from script development all the way to post-production and visual effects.
Why this debate goes far beyond a personal opinion
Seth Rogen’s remarks at Cannes reignited a discussion that the entertainment industry still hasn’t resolved: where exactly does artificial intelligence fit into the creative process without replacing what is genuinely human? The question isn’t simple, and it would be dishonest to treat it as such. There are uses of AI that most professionals accept without much pushback, like automated grammar checking, organizing narrative structures, and even generating initial ideas for brainstorming. But when AI becomes responsible for a character’s voice, the emotional arc of a story, or the narrative identity of a work, that’s when the debate gets truly complicated.
Rogen’s central argument goes beyond the fear of losing jobs — which is also legitimate and deserves attention. The deeper point is about what a screenplay represents as a cultural product. A screenplay carries the perspective of the person who wrote it, the mistakes that person has made, the stories they have lived, the jokes that only make sense to someone who grew up in a particular context. An AI trained on data can mimic patterns, recognize dramatic structures, even generate dialogue that sounds natural, but it doesn’t have a childhood, hasn’t lost someone, hasn’t fallen in love, hasn’t failed in a way that changed its entire worldview. That difference might seem philosophical at first glance, but it has very concrete practical consequences on the quality and emotional resonance of a work.
Beyond that, there is an economic and labor dimension that can’t be ignored when discussing this topic within the context of Cannes and the global entertainment industry. Studios investing in AI content generation tools are, in many cases, reducing the number of hired screenwriters, shortening creative development cycles, and pressuring the professionals still in the market to produce more in less time. The practical result of this is a homogenization of content, where stories start looking more and more alike because they draw from similar databases and models trained on the same established narrative patterns. 📉
AI as a tool versus AI as a replacement
It is important to make a distinction that often gets lost in the heat of the debate: using artificial intelligence as a support tool is completely different from handing it the authorship of a screenplay. Creative writing professionals have been using narrative structuring software, cinematic reference databases, and even audience analysis algorithms for years to better understand how their stories are performing. This doesn’t eliminate human creativity — on the contrary, it maximizes the time a screenwriter has to dedicate to what truly matters: the emotional and intellectual construction of the work.
The problem starts when AI shifts from co-pilot to lead pilot. And that transition is happening quietly across several segments of the entertainment industry, especially in lower-budget productions, niche streaming content, and advertising and digital entertainment projects. In these cases, the use of AI for script generation isn’t experimental — it is already an operational reality. Seth Rogen, by making his statement at Cannes, shone a light on something that many people would rather not discuss openly because it involves very significant financial interests on both sides of the equation.
At the same time, it would be naive to ignore that artificial intelligence has brought genuine possibilities to independent creators who previously lacked the resources needed to develop their ideas. A beginning screenwriter with no budget to hire consultants or access to a qualified feedback network can use AI tools to iterate more quickly on their ideas, identify narrative inconsistencies, and experiment with different approaches to the same scene. In that context, AI works as a democratizing resource, and that has real value that shouldn’t be dismissed just because the debate around the topic runs hot. What is ultimately at stake is collectively defining what the reasonable limits for this use should be within professional contexts where authorship and originality matter. 🤖✍️
Seth Rogen at Cannes for another reason too
It is worth noting that Seth Rogen’s time at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival wasn’t limited to his statements about artificial intelligence. The actor and producer was at the festival to support Tangles, the latest animated feature film directed by Leah Nelson. The film boasts an impressive voice cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Abbi Jacobson, Bryan Cranston, Sarah Silverman, Bowen Yang, Wanda Sykes, Beanie Feldstein, and Samira Wiley. Rogen serves as a producer on the project.
The fact that he was at Cannes representing an animated film — a format where AI has also been advancing significantly in terms of image and motion generation — makes his statements even more relevant. He is not just defending human writing in some generic way; he is actively involved in a project that depends on human talent across multiple layers, from the screenplay to the vocal performances and the art direction.
What Cannes represents in this conversation
The Cannes Film Festival is not just a film awards event — it is a cultural barometer that sets trends and positions that reverberate throughout the entertainment industry for months after the cameras shut off. When a professional of Seth Rogen’s caliber uses that platform to make such a direct statement about artificial intelligence and screenwriting, the impact goes far beyond a social media viral moment. It signals that a significant portion of creative professionals is unwilling to passively accept the narrative that AI is inevitable and that resisting it is a sign of technological ignorance.
Cannes 2025 had already signaled that the topic would be central to this year’s edition, with panels dedicated to the impact of automation on cinema, roundtables on copyright in AI-generated content, and discussions about whether festivals should or shouldn’t accept works created primarily by automated systems. Rogen’s remarks entered this context not as a bolt from the blue, but as the loudest voice in a conversation that was already happening in several other formats throughout the festival. And that voice gained reach precisely because it came backed by the credibility of someone who built a solid career writing stories that genuinely connected with millions of people around the world.
What Cannes showed in this edition is that the debate over AI and creativity has reached a level of maturity where positions are more clearly defined and where industry professionals are less willing to sit on the fence. On one side, there are those who see the technology as an inevitable and necessary ally for the economic sustainability of productions. On the other, there are those who, like Seth Rogen, argue that certain creative processes lose their most fundamental meaning when delegated to machines. Between these two poles, the entertainment industry will need to find a path that respects both innovation and the integrity of human creative work. And that conversation, clearly, is far from over. 🎥
