98-Year-Old and AI Collaborate to Reimagine Harry Potter in Animated Short

New York filmmaker Chris Carboni has created an animated short film titled 'Hairy Pouter' that reinterprets the first Harry Potter book, 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,' through the collaboration of 98-year-old Lillian Restivo and artificial intelligence. Restivo was asked to read the book and then answer questions about the plot, characters, and setting. Her confused and humorous responses were fed into an AI software that generated images without any additional context, resulting in a completely new narrative. The title itself is a distortion of the original, transforming 'Harry Potter' into 'Hairy Pouter' ('broncio peloso' in Italian). Carboni describes the project as putting a beloved story into the hands of two unique collaborators to transform it into something new. The film premiered in 2022 and was covered by Artribune.