Directed By AI

Directed By AI is a collaborative film and media installation co-directed by Jonghoon Ahn and an AI system trained to develop narrative structure, characters, and visuals. Based on Ahn’s personal facial data, the project reconstructs his mother and sister as virtual beings, generating a new fictional family. At the heart of the story lies a mother’s fear of passing her cancer to her daughter, exploring themes of inherited trauma and emotional estrangement.
Through diffusion models, the visual forms of the characters were designed and expanded, while large language models (LLMs) were used to refine dialogue and narrative flow. For the installation component, video portraits of the virtual mother and sister were generated using Ahn’s own face data, and his voice was altered into female voices to perform the dialogue, creating a fluid yet uncanny form of familial self-duplication.