AI-Generated Cinema and the Emergence of a New Visual Regime

Author : Sevcan Sonmez

Abstract : This study examines the development of AI-generated short films as an emerging aesthetic and ontological rupture in the history of cinema, investigating how these productions establish new regimes of meaning. While early examples of AI-assisted filmmaking appeared in the 2010s, by the mid-2020s this practice has reached a qualitatively different level of cinematic expression. In early works, the camera and the gaze remain primarily human, with artificial intelligence functioning mainly as a tool for image generation. In more recent films, however, the gaze itself becomes increasingly machinic, as algorithms determine what is considered significant and which faces, movements, or actions enter the frame. Moreover, because AI-generated films rely on production processes fundamentally different from classical shooting and filmmaking techniques, they create a cinematic space that departs from traditional visual regimes, enabling more experimental modes of narration and altering conventions of scale, perspective, and editing rhythm. The study shows that early AI films were driven largely by visual randomness and abstract image production, whereas contemporary examples engage more actively with narrative, editing, and rhythm as core cinematic components. This transformation is interpreted as a historical shift from a human-centered model of cinema toward a new cinematographic regime shaped by the perceptual and visual logic of the machine. Methodologically, the research employs content analysis and a comparative visual-aesthetic approach, analyzing AI-generated short films from different periods in terms of narrative structures, visual composition, temporal organization, and configurations of subjectivity, and discusses how these emerging practices may contribute to the formal transformation of next-generation cinema.

Keywords : AI, Cinema, AI Narration, AI Aesthetics, AI Generated Films

Conference Name : International Conference on Film, Media, and Audience Studies (ICFMAS - 26)

Conference Place : Saint Petersburg, Russia

Conference Date : 28th Aug 2026