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Ava DuVernay is defending her decision to use AI in her new Netflix documentary 14th.

The upcoming project is a deep dive on the Constitution’s 14th Amendment and the fight over birthright citizenship. Archival photographs are brought to life with the help of AI in the doc.

As she screened 14th at the 2026 AFI Fest on Sunday (October 25), Ava, 54, spoke to The Hollywood Reporter where she responded to criticism over the use of AI in the doc.

“The tools that the artists used to do the parallax and the animation in the films have that technology in them, as does Pro Tools with sound, as does Avid with editorial, as does Resolve with color,” she said of industry postproduction tools. “I think we’ve come to a place in filmmaking where we have to be really sober about the ways in which that technology is [used] across so much of the workflow.”

Ava added of AI, “We didn’t use it to fabricate a person or make an avatar of a person or approximate someone’s voice that said something they didn’t say. We actually animated some photos that are in the public domain, and from what we’ve been hearing from people, it does bring people closer to that time in history, which was our goal. So people have to see it and check it out for themselves and make their decisions about how they feel.”

14th will get a limited theatrical run starting November 27 and start streaming on Netflix on December 4. You can find out more about the doc here.

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