Palme d'Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda's latest film, "Sheep in the Box," arrived in US theaters on July 23, 2026. It tells the story of a parent whose seven-year-old son dies in an accident, and who then receives a robotic copy of the child from an AI company. The Verge

Kore-eda won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his 2018 movie "Shoplifters." He screened "Sheep in the Box" as one of 22 films competing for the same prize at the 2026 Cannes festival, hoping to win a second time. Reuters Reuters

In an interview through an interpreter at Neon's offices days before the US debut, Kore-eda talked about the research behind the script. He consulted a robotics expert while writing the film and was told that "we would sooner have clones of humans than we would humanoid robots," because robots overheat. That detail matters: heat buildup remains a major obstacle for robots shaped like humans, and the film's idea of a convincing child-sized robot is, by the expert's own assessment, further from reality than biological cloning. The Verge

Kore-eda also said he ran the "Sheep in the Box" script through ChatGPT, a popular AI tool that generates text based on patterns learned from huge amounts of writing. The interview did not explain what he used it for or how it affected the final draft. The disclosure puts Kore-eda among a growing group of artists experimenting with AI during the writing process, whether for feedback on story structure, trying out different dialogue, or exploring alternative scenes. The Verge

Grief is familiar ground for the director. Kore-eda noted that his first film, "Maborosi," dealt with the subject, and that he read Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's books on grief while making it. "Sheep in the Box" pushes that interest into speculative territory, asking what happens when AI tools are offered as a way to cope with loss. The Verge

The film's premise is not entirely fictional. Kore-eda pointed to two real-world examples during the interview. In Japan, a famous singer who had died was re-created using AI and used to perform a new song. In Korea, a young girl who had died was re-created with AI to help her parents grieve. Both cases involve rebuilding a person's voice or face using data about them, used after their death for emotional or commercial reasons. The technology behind these re-creations has advanced quickly, and the ethical and psychological questions the film raises are ones that families, tech companies, and lawmakers are already dealing with. The Verge

The broader context here is that the entertainment industry's use of AI has gone far beyond behind-the-scenes tools. AI-generated media is now a creative tool, a product for recreating people who have died, and a subject of legal and regulatory debate all at once. When a filmmaker of Kore-eda's stature makes a feature about AI and grief, uses ChatGPT while writing it, and bases the fiction on real cases of AI re-creation of the dead, the film works as both a story and a reflection of where we are culturally.

In this author's view, the gap between the film's technology and what engineering can actually do today is worth paying attention to. The robotics expert's comment about overheating is not a small footnote. Full-body humanoid robots that can interact convincingly with a grieving parent for long stretches are not coming soon. Heat is just one of several hard physical limits, along with battery life, the precision of robotic limbs, and the computing speed needed for the robot to respond in real time, that keep today's robots far from anything that could pass as a child. The film's AI company delivering a robotic double is, for now, closer to science fiction than to anything on an engineering timeline.

What the film does capture plausibly is the human side. Bereaved parents' willingness to accept an artificial replacement, and companies' incentive to sell one, are both already visible. Voice cloning and digital re-creation services exist today. The question "Sheep in the Box" seems to ask is not whether the technology will arrive, but whether it will matter the way its supporters suggest, or whether grief is something that no amount of technological sophistication can truly fix.

For anyone working in technology, the film is a useful cultural data point. It shows how artists outside the tech industry understand and portray AI, and it brings forward the social uses, like re-creating the dead or offering grief companionship, that will shape what the public expects from AI regardless of what the technology can actually deliver.