Higgsfield Faces Backlash Over Misleading Cannes Claims for AI Film
The Wall Street Journal issued a correction after initially reporting that 'Hell Grind' debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, while industry figures condemn the marketing as spurious.
Higgsfield, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup valued at $1.3 billion, has come under scrutiny following claims that its fully AI-generated feature film, 'Hell Grind', premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Festival organisers confirmed that the 95-minute action movie was not part of the official selection, clarifying that it was instead screened at the Marché du Film, a separate commercial marketplace operating during the festival period.
The distinction is significant because the Marché du Film allows any film to be screened for a fee, lacking the rigorous selection process that defines the official Festival de Cannes. A festival spokesperson stated that 'Hell Grind' was not screened as part of the official program, noting that the screening occurred at a paid third-party event in a local theatre. Critics argued that Higgsfield used the association with Cannes to manufacture credibility for its technology, a sentiment echoed by director John Washburn, who described the claims as misleading and spurious.
The film, which follows four street thieves whose heist goes wrong when an ancient artifact pulls one of them into the underworld, was produced in two weeks with a total budget of $500,000. Approximately $400,000 of that cost was allocated to compute expenses. The production team utilised detailed prompts averaging 3,000 words, requiring multiple iterations to generate usable shots. The first 25 minutes of the film alone required 16,181 initial video generations to produce 253 final shots, with the team employing specific style prefixes to maintain visual consistency.
Initial reporting by the Wall Street Journal presented the screening as an official premiere without mentioning the Marché du Film, leading to widespread circulation of the story. The publication later added a correction at the bottom of its article to clarify that the film was shown at the marketplace rather than the official festival. Higgsfield’s founder had previously posted on LinkedIn, suggesting that Cannes was the room where new cinema gets legitimised, a statement that drew sharp rebuke from industry professionals who viewed it as an attempt to bypass established validation processes.
The incident highlights broader tensions within the film industry regarding the role of artificial intelligence. While Higgsfield content lead Adil Alimzhanov acknowledged the technical effort required to create a feature-length video, the marketing strategy faced criticism for conflating commercial availability with artistic merit. The event occurred alongside substantive debates at Cannes, with figures such as Tilda Swinton and Guillermo Del Toro expressing strong views on the impact of AI, further isolating Higgsfield’s claims from the festival’s official discourse.
