Generative AI and the documentary archive: creative opportunities and ethical abuses

[thumbnail of Lees, D. 2026. Generative AI and the Documentary Archive_Author's final accepted manuscript 03.11.2025 (1).pdf]
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Lees, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3787-3740 (2026) Generative AI and the documentary archive: creative opportunities and ethical abuses. In: Documentary in the Age of AI. Documentary Film Cultures (5). Peter Lang, Oxford. ISBN 9781803748887 (In Press)

Abstract/Summary

One of the most innovative uses of AI in documentary filmmaking has been its deployment in animating the audio archive (Lees, 2023), for instance enabling in-vision interviews to be generated from twentieth century sound recordings. More recently, Generative AI has been deployed to manipulate archival photographs, however such uses by documentarists have led, in certain cases, to storms of controversy (What Jennifer Did, Jenny Popplewell 2024). This chapter examines the practices of documentary filmmakers using AI to alter or augment archival sources, and the ethical issues raised. It develops a theoretical approach to the documentary archive in the age of AI, arguing that Jamie Baron’s concept of the ‘archive effect’ (2014) can now be updated to describe a new ‘GenAI archive effect’, in which the spectator reflects on the realism of the fake, sometimes indistinguishable from actuality video.

Item Type Book or Report Section
URI https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/128909
Refereed Yes
Divisions Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Arts and Communication Design > Film, Theatre & Television
Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Digital Humanities
Uncontrolled Keywords AI; Generative AI; Documentary film; archive
Publisher Peter Lang
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