CONSTRUCTING EMPATHY THROUGH AI-GENERATED FILM: A SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CSR CAMPAIGNS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/AIJBES.829095Keywords:
AI-Generated Film, Communication Practitioners, CSR Communication, NGO Storytelling, Semiotic AnalysisAbstract
Environmental NGOs are beginning to use generative AI to produce campaign films. This creates a problem specific to advocacy communication, which has long relied on the assumption that what appears on screen was actually recorded. This study asks whether films with no photographic origin can still evoke environmental empathy. Three AI-generated environmental short films (DRIFT, Crave and Earth Memories) were analysed through Christian Metz's film semiotics, which treats cinema as a system of codes rather than a record of events. Repeated close viewing was used to trace how framing, editing, sound and narrative structure produced meaning. Six NGO communication practitioners were then interviewed. Empathy in these films was built through symbolic and hyperreal imagery, and through sound design used to carry emotional weight. Photographic realism mattered less. Practitioners described AI as assistive rather than a substitute for human communicators, valuing its speed and low cost while insisting on human judgement, factual accuracy and ethical responsibility; knowing a film was synthetically produced did not appear to reduce their own emotional engagement with it. For these practitioners, authenticity rested on organisational transparency and the quality of the story rather than on the image being a photographic record. The study extends Metz's semiotics to synthetic film and offers NGOs practical guidance for environmental campaigns.
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