The devil wears Prada, and it seems so does video games designer Hideo Kojima, or at least AI-generated Prada. Following an initial collaboration in Tokyo last year, the creator of Metal Gear and Death Stranding is heading to New York for Prada Mode's Satellites II at the Hotel Chelsea in June.
Coinciding with the Tribeca Festival, the exhibition is a collaboration with the Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, whose most recent movie is the sci-fi thriller Her Private Hell. Prada says the project will explore “love, language, and creativity through the artists’ enduring dialogue and friendship.
Winding Refn's studio ByNWR, which also runs a streaming platform focused on restoring rare cult and exploitation films, has teased a surreal short promoting the event, and it's causing controversy over the apparent use of AI.
The video in the post above is a teaser for a six-minute short film for what will be the 14th edition of the Prada Mode series of cultural events and private showings. Kojima and Refn appear as space travellers in a UFO that softly crashes on an alien planet before the duo are confronted by an octopus-like kaiju only to be saved by a blonde woman who telepathically frees their craft from the marshy waters.
It's both a tribute to and a spoof of the retro exploitation movies that movies that Winding Refn is so fond of, from Barbarella to Japanese monster movies. Typical of Kojima, it's also enigmatic. Is it making fun of the sloppiness of generative AI video or celebrating it? Is it suggesting that the weird, stilted and incoherent output of AI video generators is no more or less convincing than the practical effects used in campy sci-fi movies of the past.
“Throughout our extended friendship, Hideo Kojima and I have shared the feeling that we were somehow split from the same consciousness moving through different lives while orbiting the same obsessions. That idea became the spark for a film: a space odyssey following us as we traverse a sci-fi dreamscape,” Winding Refn is quoted as saying by Women's Wear Daily
But gamers are pointing out that Kojima has criticised AI in the past. His games, have shown Kojima to be a master of futuregazing, a vital skill for any true science fiction auteur. In the Metal Gear Solid series, he foresaw the age of algorithmic control, echo chambers and AI-driven misinformation, and criticised over-reliance on technology, warning that AI could be used by authoritarian systems to manipulate narratives.
Many fans of the games see Kojima's appearance in the Prada campaign as contradicting that warning.
“Have you even played your own games Kojima? What happened to AI being corrupt [and] taking over the country. What happened to there being much more to people than their genetic code?” one person asks on X.
Despite the themes of his games, Kojima hasn't actually suggested that he's against using generative AI himself, although he did tell CNN in December that “rather than having AI create visuals or anything like that, I’m more interested in using AI in the control systems. By using AI, enemy behavior could change based on the player’s experience, actions and patterns. That kind of dynamic response would make much deeper gameplay possible.”
Prada describes Satellites II as an immersive, multi-day experience involving a spatial narrative that “reflects the balance between private environments and collective accessibility”. During a private programme, select guest rooms will function as micro television studios, hosting original performances for invited participants. These same spaces will later reopen to the public as intentional installations.
Satellites II will take place in New York at the Hotel Chelsea from 3 to 7 June. For more AI video news, don't miss the controversy around Amazon's AI KPop Demon Hunters mockbuster.
