{"id":702207,"date":"2026-05-29T13:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T13:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/702207\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T13:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T13:03:08","slug":"like-a-billionaire-on-acid-star-wars-director-gareth-edwards-comes-out-in-favour-of-ai-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/702207\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Like a billionaire on acid\u2019: Star Wars director Gareth Edwards comes out in favour of AI | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jurassic World Rebirth and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards<\/a> has enthusiastically endorsed the use of generative AI in film-making, saying \u201cit is a fucking genius at helping you\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s going to be better than CGI\u201d.<\/p>\n

Edwards was speaking at AI on the Lot, an event in Culver City, California, organised by Amazon, and in remarks reported by the Hollywood Reporter<\/a> said: \u201cI can\u2019t see a reason why you wouldn\u2019t become interested in this stuff as a film-maker. It\u2019s so clearly a tool that might be up there with the camera. It\u2019s going to be better than CGI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edwards said that AI is most useful in the preparatory stages of film-making, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s only good for iteration and discovering what the movie should be, and then once you know what it is, go in and start making it your movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIt has no taste whatsoever. It is a fucking genius at helping you. I view it like having a second-unit director who is a billionaire on acid. Like, it\u2019ll do anything you ask, not a problem. Sometimes, it\u2019ll [go] batshit crazy. And you\u2019ll give it notes, and it\u2019ll be like, \u2018I don\u2019t do notes. I\u2019ll just do something totally different.\u2019 But it\u2019s worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edwards\u2019 positive view of AI was echoed by veteran writer and director Paul Schrader, who was also speaking at the event. In remarks reported by Deadline<\/a>, Schrader said: \u201cI don\u2019t think the real future of AI commercially is in all this flash, all these monsters \u2013 that\u2019s just jacked-up special effects on steroids,\u201d he said. \u201cThe real tip of the spear is when we can create an AI protagonist, not a hybrid, and that movie makes money. When you do the new Clint Eastwood, but you don\u2019t say the words \u2018Clint Eastwood\u2019 to AI, you just describe him. And he comes up as Clint Eastwood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schrader added: \u201cAnd the movie comes out, and us carbon-based fools spend our money empathising and caring about silicon-based creations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schrader, director of American Gigolo and First Reformed as well as the writer of the Martin Scorsese-directed Taxi Driver, said that extras were also no longer needed. \u201cWhy are we paying extras $180 a day when they look so plastic? We not only pay them, we have to clothe them and feed them. Why don\u2019t we just make them? We can and we will.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, films using gen AI images have not gone down well with critics, including Steven Soderbergh\u2019s documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview<\/a>, whose AI inserts the Guardian\u2019s Peter Bradshaw described as \u201cblandly generic and very mediocre\u201d.<\/p>\n

Edwards, however, said that the pace of change in AI technology meant that it was impossible to predict its future. \u201cWe don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going to go. I think anybody saying they know exactly what\u2019s going to happen over the next five years is just a liar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jurassic World Rebirth and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards has enthusiastically endorsed the use of generative AI in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-702207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}