San Francisco festival screens films without saying which are AI
Four sessions run today at the Delancey Street Screening Room, and the audience learns only at the end of each short whether a human filmmaker or a generative model made it.
Key takeaways
- The 2026 Human vs. AI Film Premiere runs on September 26 at the Delancey Street Screening Room in San Francisco, in four sessions at 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.
- Each session runs about 100 minutes, and the audience is not told whether a human filmmaker or a generative model made a film until that film ends.
- Sparknify built the festival around pairs of opposing emotions, opening with a Joy & Sorrow session, and closes the day with a Sparknify Humanity Award and category winners.
- FilmFreeway records 32 projects selected from an estimated 3,000 submissions, and the festival's rules bar AI tools from human-produced entries entirely.
A San Francisco film premiere today keeps one thing from its audience until the credits: whether the film was made by a person or by a model.
The 2026 Human vs. AI Film Premiere runs four sessions on September 26 at the Delancey Street Screening Room, at 600 The Embarcadero, starting at 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm. Each session runs about 100 minutes. Sparknify, the festival's organiser, says the audience will not be told which films are human-made and which are AI-generated until each film ends.
The day opens with a session pairing Joy & Sorrow, and the festival groups its programme around opposing emotions rather than genres or production method. The awards come at the end: a Sparknify Humanity Award alongside winners in each emotion category. The programme also includes panel discussions on cinematography and presentations from tech startups.
What the festival is
Sparknify opened submissions earlier this year and closed them before the premiere, according to the festival's FilmFreeway listing, which records 32 projects selected from an estimated 3,000 submissions. That listing also sets out the two category rules: a human-produced entry may not use AI tools at any stage of production and is disqualified if it does, and an AI-generated entry must be created entirely with generative AI tools, with editing software allowed in post-production.
The premise is a controlled comparison. Both sides get the same emotional brief, and the audience judges the results without knowing which side produced them.
"Human vs. AI is not just a technology conversation. It is a humanity conversation," festival director Chanel Chan said in the announcement of the venue, published on May 30. That announcement places the venue inside the Delancey Street Foundation's Embarcadero complex, which it describes as one of San Francisco's most extraordinary social enterprises.
Sessions are registered separately on the festival site, which also lists an all-access pass covering all four.
The premiere runs today at the Delancey Street Screening Room in San Francisco; session tickets and the all-access pass are on the festival's site.
Sources
- sparknify.com - the four sessions and their times, the blind reveal, the pairings, the venue and the awards
- sparknify.com - the festival director's statement, the venue choice and the programme
- filmfreeway.com - the festival's submission window, key stats (32 projects selected, an estimated 3,000 submissions) and the category rules