Andrea Iervolino
Film Producer
Italian-Canadian producer behind dozens of features and one of the film industry’s most outspoken AI advocates. He produced what he calls the first feature directed by an AI — a synthetic “director” named FellinAI — while insisting it complements rather than replaces traditional cinema.
In their words
This does not replace traditional cinema, which I continue to support with a passion. It’s an alternative and complementary route, to give life to works that would otherwise remain invisible.
Biography
Andrea Iervolino (born 1987) is an Italian-Canadian film producer and entrepreneur who entered the industry young and has produced dozens of features, including Waiting for the Barbarians, the Academy Award-nominated anthology Tell It Like a Woman, and Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend. He co-founded the international production group AMBI with Monika Bacardi.
In recent years Iervolino has become one of the industry’s most vocal champions of artificial intelligence. He announced The Sweet Idleness, which he describes as the first feature film directed by an AI — a synthetic director he calls FellinAI, named in homage to Federico Fellini — and has openly imagined a future in which automation reshapes how films get made and who gets to make them.
His framing is deliberately additive rather than triumphalist. Iervolino positions AI filmmaking as a parallel track that can bring otherwise-unmakeable projects to life — stories without the budget, access, or backing to exist by conventional means — while the cinema he loves carries on alongside it.
Where they stand in the war
The opposition
Dana Terrace
Animator
Peabody Award-winning animator and creator of Disney Channel’s The Owl House who became one of animation’s most outspoken opponents of generative AI. In 2025 she urged fans to cancel Disney+ and pirate her own show in protest of the studio’s embrace of AI-generated content.
Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker
Oscar-winning director of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Pinocchio, and one of cinema’s most beloved champions of handcrafted, human-made art. In 2025 he became one of Hollywood’s most quotable opponents of generative AI, saying he would “rather die” than use it.
Kane Parsons
Director
Self-taught filmmaker who created the viral “Backrooms” horror series on YouTube as a teenager and is now directing its feature adaptation. A VFX prodigy, he is sharply critical of generative AI — saying he gets no creative enjoyment from it and would make it “disappear forever” if he could.
Tim Burton
Director
The gothic-whimsical auteur behind Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Batman. After seeing AI-generated versions of his own Disney character designs, he described the experience as something “sucking” from his soul — likening generative AI to a robot taking your humanity.
The Indie Game Awards
Awards Ceremony
An annual indie-focused awards show produced by the team behind Six One Indie. It enforces a blanket ban on generative AI — a policy that, at its December 2025 ceremony, led it to strip Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 of its Game of the Year win hours after handing it out.
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/andrea-iervolino