Director Danny Boyle arrived at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday with his film Ink, adapted from a 2017 stage play about the rise of the British tabloid The Sun in the 1970s. When asked about the future of printed journalism, Boyle said he was more concerned about the threat posed by artificial intelligence than by digital media's competition with print.
"Journalism is one of the great uprights of any civilization," Boyle said at a press conference. He noted that within journalism "there are those who stand up to power and speak truth to power, and to have those people in society is really important."
The danger, he said, lies with technology companies and their AI systems. "They'll be able to have an AI journalist who's much more efficient, cheaper, etcetera, ecetera, and will that AI journalist speak truth to the power that created it?" he asked. The film stars Jack O'Connell as Larry Lamb, the editor Rupert Murdoch hired to run The Sun, along with Claire Foy and Guy Pearce.
Boyle said the film had been difficult to finance and produce, and expressed gratitude to the festival and its artistic director Alberto Barbera for selecting Ink as the opening film. He noted that most people did not recognize the subject matter, with some asking if the film was about tattoos.
