Why Our Small Festival Uses AI Tools

Occasionally, when we share a poster containing AI-generated imagery, we receive a comment asking how an environmental film festival can justify using artificial intelligence.

It is a fair question. AI has environmental, economic, and ethical consequences that should be examined openly. As an environmental film festival, we should be willing to examine our own choices too.

But answering the question honestly also requires explaining the reality in which our festival operates.

The reality behind our work

BCEFF is a small, independent festival working with extremely limited financial resources. We are not a large organization with substantial grants, corporate backing, or a fully staffed communications department.

Running a festival requires much more than selecting and screening films. It involves maintaining a website, creating posters and social media content, writing and editing material, translating ideas into clear English, handling administrative and legal tasks, communicating with filmmakers, promoting events, and solving countless problems behind the scenes.

A well-funded organization can employ different professionals to perform these jobs. We cannot.

We deeply respect designers, illustrators, writers, translators, web developers, and other creative professionals. When an organization has the resources to compensate them properly, it should. But for us, the choice is usually not between using AI and hiring a professional. We simply do not have thousands of dollars available for every campaign or the budget to maintain a full creative and administrative team.

The actual choice is often between using an accessible tool and not being able to produce the work at all.

Technology can lower barriers

For a long time, bringing an ambitious cultural project to life required not only a good idea and a great deal of determination, but also significant access to money, professional networks, and specialized labour.

AI is beginning to lower some of those barriers.

It can help a small team develop an initial visual concept, improve a piece of writing, translate a message, organize information, update a website, or complete a task that would otherwise be beyond its available time and resources.

AI does not create our festival. It does not choose our mission, build relationships with filmmakers, understand our community, or take responsibility for our decisions. People do those things. We use AI as an assistant that helps a very small number of people accomplish work that would normally require a much larger organization.

That does not mean AI is without problems. It means that its effects are complicated. The same technology that raises serious questions about energy use, creative ownership, employment, and corporate power can also give individuals and under-resourced organizations access to capabilities that were previously available mainly to those with money.

Both realities deserve to be part of the conversation.

Sustainability also means survival

Environmental responsibility is central to our mission, but sustainability is not only a slogan. For a small organization, it also means using limited resources carefully enough to survive.

We try to operate efficiently, keep unnecessary activity to a minimum, and direct our available funding toward the essential work of the festival. If we spend beyond our means, the festival will not become more ethical—it will simply cease to exist.

That would mean fewer opportunities for environmental filmmakers, fewer public conversations about urgent ecological issues, and one less independent platform working to bring these stories to audiences.

We do not claim that using AI is environmentally neutral. Digital services, social media platforms, websites, streaming systems, search engines, and many other tools involved in organizing and promoting a modern festival all require physical infrastructure and energy. Our responsibility is to think critically about how we use these technologies, avoid unnecessary use, and balance their costs against their contribution to our mission.

A request for a more complete conversation

We welcome criticism when it is thoughtful, informed, and applied fairly. We also ask people to consider the circumstances of small organizations before assuming that every use of AI represents a decision to replace a professional worker.

If we had the budget to commission original work from artists for every campaign, employ translators and writers, and maintain a full digital team, our choices would be different. We hope to create more paid opportunities for creative professionals as our resources grow.

For now, AI enables us to continue doing work that might otherwise be impossible. It helps people with limited financial resources turn worthwhile ideas into real projects. In that sense, it can make creative and civic participation more accessible—not perfect, but less dependent on wealth.

We will continue listening, learning, and evaluating how we use these tools. We will also continue being honest about why we use them.

We ask our community to judge us not from a single poster or tool, but from the full picture: our resources, our intentions, our practices, and the environmental stories and filmmakers we are working to support.

The conversation about AI must continue. But it should include not only what these tools cost, but also whom they enable to participate.