Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro delivered a stark warning to Hollywood, declaring that artificial intelligence threatens to push the industry toward “cinema illiteracy” and calling the technology a form of “natural stupidity.”
The director behind Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and last year’s Frankenstein made the remarks while accepting the prestigious BFI Fellowship at a star-studded dinner event in Hollywood on Monday night. Before a crowd that included Leonardo DiCaprio, Jon Favreau, and Netflix executives, del Toro sounded the alarm about AI’s encroachment on the human-led process of making art.
“We are on the verge of image illiteracy. We are on the verge of cinema illiteracy, ” del Toro told the industry crowd. He argued that the human desire for creative expression is as ancient as the first images painted on cave walls—and that machines cannot replicate that impulse.
Del Toro framed the relationship between humans and visual art as something sacred. “The pact between man and image is sacred, ” he said. “We are told images can be generated by artificial means. The existence of an image is not just to be there. It is to connect us, to make us feel beauty. ”
He warned that the rising tide of political polarization, combined with AI and corporate consolidation, threatens creative freedom worldwide . Art has the power to bring people together, he stressed, “but we are in a time when that is in danger”.
This is not the director’s first public confrontation with the technology. In a 2025 interview with NPR, del Toro declared he would “rather die” than use generative AI in his films. He drew a parallel between the arrogance of Victor Frankenstein and today’s “tech bros” leading the AI charge.
“The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, ‘What is your stance on AI?’ And my answer was very short. I said, ‘I’d rather die,’ ” del Toro recalled . The 61-year-old filmmaker added that he hopes “to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak”.
Del Toro’s warning comes amid growing backlash against AI in Hollywood. Director Darren Aronofsky recently faced intense criticism for an AI-generated YouTube series that drew thousands of dislikes. The backlash suggests audiences are rejecting machine-made content and demanding human craft.
Del Toro’s own Frankenstein, a film he spent 50 years working toward, represents the antithesis of AI-generated art. Every frame was built by human hands, from production designer Tamara Deverell’s handcrafted laboratory sets to composer Alexandre Desplat’s vulnerable violin lines expressing the Creature’s wordless emotions. The result, critics agree, is something AI simply cannot replicate.
“We are not gatekeepers. We are gate-holders so more people can come in and out of the church of cinema, ” del Toro told the crowd . “I’ve been saved by images so many times in my life. “
