Avast, ye scurvy dogs and ink-stained wretches! A dark squall is brewing on the horizon, and it smells of ozone and silicon. The word has trickled down the rigging that the AI Film Festival is no longer confined to the digital doldrums of the net. No, mates, these phantom flickers are docking in actual brick-and-mortar ports across the United States come this late winter. Instead of honest men sweating over inkpots and light-tables, we’ve got lightning trapped in a bottle painting portraits of sirens that never breathed a lick of salt air. It is a mutiny against the very soul of the craft, orchestrated by landlubbers who wouldn't know a jib-boom from a toothpick.

My first mate, Scabrous Jack, spat a glob of black tobacco into the bilge when he heard the news. 'Cap’n,' he growled, 'if the machines can spin a movie-yarn better than a man who’s lost three fingers to a kraken, what’s left for us? We’ll be replaced by clockwork parrots and automated rum-distillers next!' Jack’s fear is shared by many a veteran of the creative seas. These short films, birthed by the algorithms of the Runway AI fleet, are set to haunt the silver screens where legends once stood. It is a grim day when the ghosts of the machine are given a seat at the captain's table while the sailors who built the ship are tossed overboard.

I spoke recently with a high-born devil who calls himself the Earl of Silicon, a man who claims this is the 'new golden age' of the cinematic seas. 'Captain Ink,' he sneered, adjusting his lace cuffs and sipping a tea that smelled of copper, 'why hire a thousand painters when a single spark can conjure a masterpiece in the blink of a blind eye?' To that, I say bollocks! There’s an uncanny valley deeper than the Mariana Trench in these animations. The eyes don’t move right, the hands have too many fingers, and the water looks like it was rendered in the pits of Davy Jones’s own locker. Yet, the public is being told to cheer as these ghostly vessels sail into their local multiplexes.

The implications for our brotherhood are dire. If the merchants can sell tickets to see movies made by ghost-shades, they’ll stop paying for the blood, sweat, and grog of real artists. We are witnessing a blockade against the human spirit. Old Blind Pete, our resident shanty-man, wept into his grog at the prospect. 'They’re taking the ghosts out of the machine and putting ‘em on the screen,' he wailed. It’s a grim prospect, seeing the Short Film Showcase dominated by entities that have no shadows and no heartbeat, stealing the wind from the sails of living, breathing creators.

Mark your charts for February, for that is when the invasion begins in earnest. These shorts will be flickering across the theaters of the colonies, a testament to the hubris of the lords of technology. While the theaters might be warm and smell of buttered corn, the shadows on the wall are cold as a North Atlantic winter. We’ll be watching closely from the crow’s nest, ready to fire a broadside should these digital phantoms try to board our own creative vessels. Stay alert, keep your powder dry, and for the love of the sea, don’t trust a film that wasn't bled for.