AI thriller Delisted imagines terrifying future where people are digitally erased
New British AI short film Delisted imagines a chilling future where workers lose their jobs before being completely erased from digital society.
A new British short film is imagining a disturbing future in which artificial intelligence does not simply take people's jobs, but helps make them effectively disappear from society.
Delisted follows a teacher, truck driver and journalist who have already lost their livelihoods to automation. When protests break out, those who resist find themselves removed from the digital systems modern life depends upon, including bank accounts, phones, identification, medical records and employment records.
A 28-minute AI warning
Written and directed by Michael Patrick Clarkson, the 28-minute drama was created for the Future of Life Institute and produced by Manchester-based Space Digital.
Despite its subject, Delisted is not simply an AI-generated film. More than 20 actors and around 100 extras were involved, with filming taking place across Lancashire and Manchester before extensive visual-effects work was completed at MediaCity.
One particularly complex sequence lasts only around five seconds but required weeks of work to create the technology operating behind the fictional AI system.
The result is essentially a warning about how much of everyday life now depends on interconnected digital services. Its characters remain physically alive, but the systems surrounding them behave as though they no longer exist.
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For viewers interested in where AI, entertainment and public policy increasingly overlap, Delisted offers something different from another technology demonstration. It uses conventional drama to ask what could happen if automated systems eventually gained too much power over real lives.
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