Replacing AI Fear With Fun: A HumanPrint Interview with Cookie

For the first guest interview on HumanPrint, I’m talking with Cookie Young of The Neon Vegas — marketing heretic, synthetic era image provocateur, and boutique AI filmmaker — about what happens when you stop debating AI long enough to actually make stuff with it.

Cookie takes us inside her filmmaking process, from writing the script and developing storyboards with ChatGPT to directing AI-generated video, editing, music, sound, and figuring out when the technology needs another round of direction…and when it’s time to say, okay, bro, whatever, this works.

We talk about the parallels between AI filmmaking and traditional filmmaking, why “right” matters more than perfect, keeping your own vision at the center when you're working with generative tools, and the difference between showcasing what an AI model can do and using it to tell a story that actually belongs to you.

And then there’s the idea that kept coming up throughout our conversation: fun.

What changes when you approach these tools with curiosity instead of fear? What becomes possible when AI expands what you can create instead of becoming the subject of everything you create?

Cookie has a pretty simple answer to all the endless talking about AI: Don’t talk about it. Be about it.

So we did. And had a ridiculous amount of fun in the process.