Some projects do not arise simply because we plan them.
They emerge because something that has lived within us for a long time suddenly begins to move.
That is how it was with my new short film.
When I began working with AI-assisted filmmaking tools, something unexpected appeared: a creative current into which I let myself fall more and more deeply. Images became scenes. Scenes became worlds. And with every decision, something that had long lived within me became more visible.
Ever since I saw my first films as a child, these images have fascinated me. Great images. Epic worlds. Stories that draw you into another reality. James Cameron’s films inspired me especially—that feeling that cinema does not merely tell a story, but opens worlds.
Over the past years I have repeatedly supported creative film projects, shot music videos, created videos of my own, and worked with image and sound. But creating a short film—with an atmosphere that feels almost like a major Hollywood production—was something else entirely.
And that is exactly what has now emerged.
And at the same time, the possibility of sharing these experiences with other people in a form that has fascinated me since childhood: as a film.
For this I feel profound gratitude.
At the same time, this project leads me directly into one of the great questions of our time:
For me, this question does not begin with new possibilities or concerns.
It leads inward.
To the question of what is already true within us and finally seeks expression.
AI between fear and possibility
As the tools become faster and faster, a new pressure easily arises in the world around us.
Every day seems to bring new possibilities. OpenAI. Anthropic. Google. New AI models. New business models. New ideas that have suddenly become possible. And quickly the feeling arises:
I have to understand what is possible more quickly.
I have to find an idea more quickly.
I have to claim a space more quickly, before somebody else does.
Yet this very haste makes us miss the deeper quality of this time.
Then it is no longer about deploying the new technology in an especially clever way, fearing replacement, or being swept into another gold rush. It is about following the expression that truly comes from within me—and therefore could only come through me.
In my white paper “What remains when AI takes over routine?”—which also became a small work of art for me—I have already explored this question.
More and more people sense that AI is changing something fundamental. Old structures are dissolving. Professions are changing. Familiar certainties are becoming fragile. Pope Leo XIV is now also publishing his encyclical on artificial intelligence.
It shows us how much of our work was already automated because it did not truly arise from within us. How much of our thinking was adopted from reproducible beliefs. How much of our expression may not have come from ourselves at all, but from adaptation, expectations, roles, and repetition.
And then a new question arises:
AI can organize, structure, and understand—just like our intellect.
But it cannot experience what it is like to feel wet grass beneath bare feet.
It can pass on knowledge.
But it cannot experience what it is like to recognize something genuinely new. To see a new door in life. And to walk through it.
That is precisely what makes it artificial.
It is separated from the only thing that has ever truly existed and ever will:
From output to the creative act
At a time when artificial intelligence can generate entire articles, presentations, images, or lines of code from only a few prompts, one fundamental question must be asked anew:
What does creative expression mean?
Because that is the subtle but decisive difference:
And only there does genuine creativity begin.
It does not matter whether you create texts, images, apps, films, whole system landscapes, or products.
Because there is one more thing AI does not bring with it:
an intention of its own.
It has no self.
No why.
No inner concern.
AI generates output from what you bring to it.
My short film as lived self-expression
This is exactly how I experienced the making of my short film. Not as simply asking AI to “create” moving images for me.
I carry an inner world. A vision. A story that has accompanied me for a long time: Hermes, Thoth, magic, Atlantis, and the remembrance of a deeper truth.
AI helped me make this inner world visible.
It allowed me to open cinematic spaces that once would have required an enormous budget, a team, studios, sets, and complex production structures.
And yet it was not the origin of the film.
The origin was what is alive within me and seeking expression.
For as within, so without. What we recognize and embody as true is reflected in relationships, work, decisions, and the paths of our lives.
And the more clearly we trust what is alive within us, the more clearly it can take form in the world: as a clearer voice, a creative project, a new professional direction, an offering, or a new way of becoming visible.