Danny Boyle used roughly 30 seconds of generative AI in Ink, his drama about the launch of The Sun, to animate a pair of old photographs and to add mice running through the tabloid's newsroom. He laid out the specifics in a video interview with Vanity Fair, reported by Deadline.
- Boyle confirmed the AI from Telluride after questions at Venice. Ink opened the Venice Film Festival before playing Telluride, where viewers had already asked about the film's reanimated images.
- The animated images appear to include the Kray twins and Margaret Thatcher. Festival viewers questioned whether those reanimated pictures used AI, and Boyle's account points to those photographs.
- Boyle attached a condition to replacing performers. He said AI is useful "provided you pay actors if you're going to replace them with some kind of AI embodiment."
- CG mice let him skip real animals. He said he got "in trouble" with PETA for using chimpanzees on 28 Days Later and has avoided real animals since.
- Ink reaches cinemas in December and Netflix in January. The Studiocanal and Netflix film holds an 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The reanimated photos point to the Kray twins and Margaret Thatcher
Boyle put the total AI footage at about half a minute, spread across two animated photographs and the mice. "There's about 30 seconds of it in our movie where we animate a couple of old photographs," he said, per Deadline.
Viewers at festival screenings singled out reanimated images of the Kray twins and Margaret Thatcher, and Boyle's account points to those photographs as the AI work.
He also used it for animals. "It's very good for animals, and we had some mice that run around The Sun newsroom," he added.
Boyle set a condition on replacing actors with AI
Asked about AI in film generally, Boyle deferred to a younger audience and set a limit. "My opinion of it is that it's a very useful tool in many ways, provided you use it respectfully and provided you pay actors if you're going to replace them with some kind of AI embodiment," he told Vanity Fair, as Deadline reported.
His turn to CG animals traces back to PETA. Boyle said he got "in trouble" with the group for using real chimpanzees on 28 Days Later and has tried to avoid real animals since.
At the Venice press conference for Ink, he raised a separate concern about AI and journalism, warning that tech giants could field an "AI journalist who's much more efficient, cheaper" and asking whether such a system would "speak truth to the power that created it."
Whether Ink flags the AI on screen is unconfirmed
Some viewers said on social media that the film discloses its AI use in the end credits. The production did not confirm that to Deadline when asked, so the on-screen disclosure stays unverified.
Netflix, which streams Ink in January after a December cinema run, has leaned into generative animation elsewhere; we previously reported on its INKubator studio. Ink itself, starring Jack O'Connell, Guy Pearce and Claire Foy, charts the 1970s rise of the tabloid under editor Larry Lamb, after Rupert Murdoch poached him from the Daily Mirror.
