Nollywood filmmaker Akay Mason has drawn a hard line on artificial intelligence in movies, saying AI-generated films will collapse because they cannot deliver the feeling audiences get from real human actors.
Mason made the argument in an X post on Friday, September 11, 2026. He said every AI short film he has watched comes up empty.
“AI films will fail. Every AI short film I’ve seen lacks the emotional connection we instinctively feel when watching actual humans perform. It just feels empty.”
He went further. Stars still sell cinema, he said, because viewers want someone to worship. A generated face cannot carry that heat.
“Another reason is our tendency toward idolatry and celebrity culture. We love to worship our stars. With AI films, there are no stars to worship. You know the character on screen is nothing but a series of codes.”
Mason is not calling for a ban on the technology. He uses it himself.
“Sure, filmmakers now use AI as a tool to fix VFX, lighting, or sound issues, and that’s perfectly okay (heck, I even used ChatGPT to fix a few grammatical issues with this post).”
What he will not accept is a digital stand-in taking the place of a performer.
“But if we’re being real, AI actors cannot replace a real actor’s performance, which is, at its core, the expression of the human soul.”
For Mason, acting is not just movement and dialogue. It is a person putting their inner life on screen. Code can copy a face, but it cannot copy that.
The director behind Elevator Baby, Day of Destiny, Bank Alert and Love in a Pandemic has spent years working with casts that include some of Nollywood’s biggest names. He is currently producing and directing the moral thriller Five Figures, with Odunlade Adekola, Ini Edo, Uche Montana and others attached. His career is built on human performances, which makes the timing of the post pointed as AI tools push deeper into film sets worldwide.
The debate is not unique to Nigeria. Filmmakers elsewhere have used AI for backgrounds and effects while insisting synthetic actors still feel fake. Mason’s post lands in that same fight, with a sharper punch.