Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in ‘Backrooms’
A24
Backrooms might be hiding a secret—a warning about generative AI.
A24’s box office hit is based on “the Backrooms,” a seven-year old meme about the uncanny horror of nostalgia and artificial spaces.
However, some fans see a clear metaphor for AI within the film.
Recent comments from Backrooms director Kane Parsons fueled further speculation, as the YouTuber-turned-filmmaker is fiercely critical of generative AI.
Many fans believe that the film’s parallels to the controversial technology are no accident.
What Did Kane Parsons Say About Generative AI?
“I think I’m in the same boat as most well-adjusted people,” Parsons told The Australian.
“If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.”
Parsons, a self-taught VFX artist who made Backrooms-themed content on YouTube, created many viral videos using Blender, a free 3D-rendering tool.
“We already live in a world where you walk outside and there are billboards and signs that are obvious AI slop. That’s become part of our visual reality. To me, generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot.”
“I’m interested in using that iconography in art – not using AI to make the art itself, but examining what it represents. I definitely want to explore it further in future projects,” concluded Parsons.
According to some fans, Parsons’ Backrooms explores the dangers of generative AI.
Is ‘Backrooms’ Really About Generative AI?
Warning—Spoilers Ahead
Backrooms could easily be viewed as a metaphor for the horrors of generative AI, although the story is open to interpretation.
Backrooms depicts the downward spiral of Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a man stuck in a stagnant life, living in his own furniture store and drinking himself to sleep.
When Clark enters the Backrooms, he finds an endless labyrinth of scrambled detritus, including pieces from his store.
Deep inside, there are mindless copies of real people, “misremembered” by the Backrooms and hideously malformed—Clark even finds a monstrous clone of himself, and chooses to befriend it.
When Clark’s therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), enters the Backrooms to find him, she realizes that Clark is not trapped—he enjoys living in the artificial space.
Clark believes the Backrooms absorbs memories and shoddily reproduces them, which is why the rooms are full of distorted people and objects.
After demanding that Mary validate his delusions, Clark is eaten by his monstrous clone, representing his worst self.
Backrooms is a gripping story of a lost soul in a self-imposed prison, said prison bearing a striking resemblance to AI.
The parasitic nature of the Backrooms is similar to generative AI, which works by absorbing vast quantities of writing, imagery and footage by real people, spitting out media that contains inhuman errors.
Common “hallucinations” in AI-generated media include distorted hands, limbs and faces, as well as malformed objects that melt into the floor and walls.
These hallucinations are less common in newer, more powerful models, but frequently seen in background details, especially in complex images and videos, such as depictions of crowds.
The Backrooms has similar imagery, reflecting the outside world, without a sense of context. Randomly placed furniture is often missing vital pieces, or absorbed into the floor.
Most strikingly, the inhabitants of the Backrooms, with their extra fingers and warped features, greatly resemble AI-generated hallucinations.
In the film, the Backrooms is only discovered because it is stealing electricity from Clark’s store, reflecting concerns of power-hungry data centers fueling generative AI models.
While the Backrooms are uncannily artificial and nightmarish, it does contain something seductive to Clark—escapism and empty validation.
AI chatbots are famously sycophantic, capable of validating delusional and paranoid thoughts, sometimes with tragic consequences.
Clark’s descent echoes a victim of AI psychosis, with the Backrooms providing an escape from reality, a place where no one tells him that he’s wrong—his only companion is his worst self.
Backrooms is a horror story of a stagnant life, a tale of a lost soul who refuses to change, but it could also be viewed as a metaphor for the worst aspects of generative AI.
Like the endless corridors of the Backrooms, filled with half-remembered junk, AI is flooding the internet with mindless slop, and telling vulnerable users exactly what they want to hear.
In the film, Clark’s last words are spent reassuring his monster, “we don’t have to change,” just before he is devoured.