James Cameron thinks the idea of generative AI replacing actors is "horrifying."
The Avatar: Fire and Ash director - who sits on the board of Stability AI - has previously been vocal about the use of artificial intelligence in filmmaking but there are limits to how he feels it should be used.
He deemed the motion capture the "purest form" of performance and admitted he thinks it was a "mistake" that he was reluctant to "pull the curtain back" on the CGI-assisted technique when working on 2009's Avatar in order to keep the "magic unblemished" for audiences.
Speaking on CBS Sunday Mornings, James said: “For years, there was this sense that, ‘Oh, they’re doing something strange with computers and they’re replacing actors,’ when in fact, once you really drill down and you see what we’re doing, it’s a celebration of the actor-director moment, and the actor-to-actor moment. It’s a celebration of, I call it, the sanctity of the actor’s performance moment.”
“Now, go to the other end of the spectrum, and you’ve got generative AI, where they can make up a character, they can make up an actor. They can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt,” he added.
"It’s like, no. That’s horrifying to me. That’s the opposite. That’s exactly what we’re not doing,” the Oscar-winning director said, adding that never wants to "replace" actors with technology.
He added: “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.”
However, James does have a soft corner for AI because it could be helpful in "making VFX cheaper."
James Cameron explained, “Right now, imaginative films, fantastic films, science-fiction films — they’re starting to die off as a breed because they’re expensive and the theatrical marketplace has contracted, and now studios are only comfortable spending those kinds of dollar amounts with blue-chip IP, that which we’ve seen, that which we know. I mean, a movie like Avatar would never get made in that environment. That was brand-new IP; nobody had ever heard of it.”
