James Cameron, film director, shares his opinion of generative AI in movies: “That’s horrifying to me”
The famous director has revealed what he thinks of generative AI in movies.
It’s already here, and it’s here to stay. In a recent appearance on CBS’s Sunday Morning, director James Cameron warned the world of TV and film about what he sees as a dangerous new prospect on the horizon: generative AI being able to fabricate entire actors and performances.
For decades, Cameron has made his name pushing the boundaries of visual effects, but it appears that AI, for his liking, is one step too far.
“They can make up an actor. They can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt. It’s like, no. That’s horrifying to me.
“Now, go to the other end of the spectrum, and you’ve got generative AI, where they can make up a character... That’s the opposite. That’s exactly what we’re not doing. I don’t want a computer doing what I pride myself on being able to do with actors. I don’t want to replace actors, I love working with actors.”
“I don’t think they’ll know the difference”
“What generative AI can’t do is create something new that’s never been seen. The models … are trained on everything that’s ever been done before; it can’t be trained on that which has never been done. So you will innately see, essentially, all of human art and human experience put into a blender, and you’ll get something that is kind of an average of that. So what you can’t have is that individual screenwriter’s unique lived experience and their quirks. You won’t find the idiosyncrasies of a particular actor.”
“It also causes us to have to set our bar to a very disciplined level,” he added, “and to continue to be out-of-the-box imaginative. The act of performance, the act of actually seeing an artist creating in real time, will become sacred.”
In recent months, cinema’s growing flirtation with artificial intelligence has taken a dramatic turn with the debut of Tilly Norwood, the first fully AI-generated “actor” that some talent agencies are already eyeing.
The project, unveiled by comedian-producer Eline Van der Velden under her AI-talent studio Xicoia, has ignited a fierce debate about the fate of the film industry.
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Van der Velden told Variety that she thinks AI actors “will be a slow progression” in the industry. “I’m sure in the coming year, there’ll be plenty of effects that will be made with AI. There’ll be some establishing shots, there’ll be some second-unit shots with AI, and then slowly, we’ll progress to a full AI film. And whether people will pay for an AI film or not — I don’t think they’ll know the difference."
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