Cannes Festival signs up Meta as sponsor amid AI fears

The Cannes Film Festival has signed a multi-year sponsorship deal with social network giant and major AI investor Meta, the company announced Monday, despite fears about the impact of its new video tools on the cinema industry.

Meta said in a statement that it was "proud to be an official partner of the Festival de Cannes in a new multi-year strategic partnership", replacing social video platform TikTok.

The group is set to organise a series of promotional events for its video-enabled Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which are becoming increasingly popular among influencers but have sparked privacy fears.


It will also showcase its new artificial intelligence-powered video generative technology, which has been embraced by Oscar-winning "Traffic" director Steven Soderbergh for his latest film.

Soderbergh partnered with Meta for a documentary about the last interview given by Beatles songwriter John Lennon before his death, which will premiere at the Cannes Festival.

The film features AI-generated footage of Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono -- a major talking point in an industry which mostly views the technology as a threat to jobs, as well as a danger for copyright and original storytelling.

Soderbergh told Deadline magazine last week that AI-generated video comprises about 10 percent of the film and was used for "sequences that have images that are impossible to shoot".

The use of AI was central to the 2023 strikes that shut down Hollywood, as actors and writers warned that unchecked technology threatened their livelihoods.

Thousands of French actors and filmmakers warned in an open letter in February that AI tools were "plundering" talent across the industry, comparing them to a "devouring hydra".

The Cannes Festival kicks off on Tuesday and runs until May 23.