“We have become addicted to extremes”

 Interview by Ruben Donsbach

Mr. Avcıoğlu, you produced a documentary about the impact of new mass media on our society entirely with AI-driven image programs. None of the images are “real” in the conventional sense. What are you trying to show?

We live in an age in which there is so much available information that reality threatens to suffocate under its weight. The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard already understood in the 1970s that in postmodern culture the copy had become more real than the original. In our world today, this effect has intensified even further: from politics to social media, everything feels staged and artificial.

Doesn’t your film itself reinforce this artificiality?

Of course. But the use of AI-generated, synthetic images also offers the opportunity to hold up a mirror to this world. The film reflects how artificiality has become our shared environment and invites viewers not only to question what is true or false, but also to examine the mechanisms through which social reality is constructed in the first place.

Could you give an example?

For instance, I regenerated the photo of an oil-covered cormorant that became something of an icon of the first Gulf War. I ask the viewer: Which image is more real—the AI-generated one or the original? The answer seems obvious, but in reality the so-called original was a fake. In a world like ours, isn’t the synthetic image of the bird more truthful and more real? After all, it documents the act of falsification itself.

So you’re saying it’s no longer about true or false, but about whether the fake reveals itself as such?

More than that. When editing my film, I aimed to systematically provoke a desire for truth in the audience by constantly entangling them in cognitive dissonance. Because the images, the narrator’s voice (“There is so much information that reality threatens to suffocate under its weight”), and the music were generated with AI, viewers instinctively distrust what they see and hear. Yet all the information in the film is factually true.

At the beginning of your film, you quote Elias Canetti from his book The Human Province: “Without noticing it, humanity suddenly withdrew from reality.” Why did you choose this quote?

For me, it marks a historical threshold. Even in the 1970s, Canetti described how the age of mass media had begun replacing reality with symbols and emotions — mere representations of reality. Even then, it was clear how easily mass psychology could be manipulated. In Post Truth, I describe this new representation of reality as a kind of “post-digital psyche.”

What does that mean?

It means we were not forced, but rather we allowed ourselves to be seduced. We did not leave reality because it was taken from us, but because we chose to inhabit a more convenient, customizable version of it. That recalls the 1999 film The Matrix, in which the protagonist Neo discovers that humanity lives in a simulation. Absolutely — we live in a matrix, but today it is not primarily digital; it is cognitive.

But we are constantly sitting in front of screens.

We are confronted with data cycles and algorithms that feed on and amplify our emotions and prejudices, constantly reshaping how we perceive the world — that’s true. But the strange thing is that we are aware of this. And yet we repeatedly choose the path of least resistance and remain inside our bubbles. The Matrix and similar allegorical films depict a world beyond appearances. For me, however, They Live by John Carpenter is the better analogy for understanding our current reality. It features an endless alley fight scene — one I reference in Post Truth — often read as a metaphor for spiritual awakening, for the struggle between seeing and not seeing the truth behind appearances. Today, it is less about recognizing lies. We must have the courage to face the truth rather than consciously avoid it.

The Matrix is heavily influenced by postmodern theories that criticize authority in all forms. You say that today’s widespread distrust of facts and mainstream media began there — leading to submission to a new digital regime?

It’s strange and deeply paradoxical. Postmodernism dismantled grand narratives and the idea of objective truth without replacing them with anything coherent. Technology filled the resulting vacuum: it promises connection but produces isolation — a state of hyper-individualized freedom disguised as emancipation. What began as rebellion against ideological authority destroyed the very foundations that once allowed us to distinguish truth from illusion.

In your film, you mention Daniel Kahneman’s bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow and say it strongly influenced tech giants like Facebook and Google. Could you explain?

Daniel Kahneman popularized behavioral economics and received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 for his contributions. He and other thinkers in his field influenced technology companies to view human beings as programmable systems. Insights from psychology — later reinforced by neuroscience and data science — gave tech giants a model for manipulating attention and emotion in the name of efficiency. This mindset transformed digital platforms into what I call “emotion machines.”

How do these “emotion machines” work?

Essentially, it’s a system that interprets and manipulates human emotions in real time. Algorithms are designed to show people more of what they like. The unintended consequence has been the rise of echo chambers and growing intolerance toward dissenting opinions — a new form of tribalism.

Will the era of generative AI accelerate this process?

For me, AI served as a tool to bring my visions and ideas to the screen. For society at large, however, AI merely accelerates a development we’ve already discussed: a world increasingly driven by data, optimization, and behavioral prediction — one in which human experience is reduced to patterns and we lose the ability to understand or accept other worldviews.

That doesn’t sound good.

Perhaps, but I truly believe the problem is not the tool itself, but how we use it.

Could AI also help us break out of our increasingly hermetic bubbles?

Of course. AI is perceived as a threat, but that has been true of every technological innovation. In the long term, creative individuals have the opportunity to use AI to show us a way out. However, this will not come from the tech giants. They will flood us with easily consumable products — AI-driven “people-pleaser” LLMs (large language models).

What do you mean by that?

Essentially nothing more than ELIZA, an early chatbot from the 1960s that simply mirrored users’ own words back to them, creating the illusion of understanding without actually thinking. Sixty years later, most models serve the same purpose. For me, it is far more important to use AI to confront people with their contradictions rather than to comfort them.

But what if a self-aware superintelligent AI were to wake up — wouldn’t that change everything?

In my view, superintelligence is largely a marketing narrative companies use to hype their current models. I’m skeptical and tend to follow philosophers like John Searle, who argues that simulating intelligence is not the same as genuine understanding. Even without artificial general intelligence (AGI), massive societal changes are inevitable. Humanity itself is not at stake, but our 20th-century understanding of what it means to be human certainly is. AI forces us to rethink what intelligence, creativity, and consciousness really mean. In that sense, this technological disruption could open something deeper.

What do you mean?

I believe we will explore and come to understand what lies beyond rational intelligence. It will be turbulent, but it could lead to better paradigms and more developed forms of human self-understanding. As with every major historical turning point, some ways of life will disappear, but others will emerge.

While watching your film, I was reminded of Jean-Luc Godard, whose films also aimed to make viewers aware of cinema’s artificiality. Your film includes typical AI “errors,” such as distorted faces or hands with twelve fingers, which you seem to use deliberately.

Godard has had a major influence on me. My style also builds on such “errors.” They are a powerful metaphor for the strange era we live in — and therein lies the greatest potential for a new artistic language. We inhabit a world that constantly tries to appear perfect, while deep down it is staged, performed, and false. The synthetic and uncanny aesthetics of AI will eventually become emblematic of our time.

You dedicated Post Truth to your young son. Are you worried about the world he will grow up in?

No, I believe that kind of worry is one of the great misconceptions of modern thinking. We live in one of the safest and most prosperous eras in history — yet many believe it is too dark a time to bring a child into the world. Our brains are wired to prioritise negative information, and through constant screen exposure we have become addicted to extremes — to crisis, outrage, and fear. Over time, this addiction has embedded itself in the culture and shapes how we perceive reality. In that sense, my film is not pessimistic. Rather, it attempts to expose the absurdity of our collective mindset. Only then can one learn to think freely instead of adopting prefabricated worldviews.