{"id":168442,"date":"2025-12-01T01:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T01:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/168442\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T01:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T01:18:08","slug":"james-cameron-calls-idea-of-gen-ai-replacing-actors-horrifying-says-tech-will-make-human-creation-more-sacred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/168442\/","title":{"rendered":"James Cameron Calls Idea Of Gen AI Replacing Actors \u201cHorrifying,\u201d Says Tech Will Make Human Creation More \u201cSacred\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though James Cameron \u2014 who sits on the board of Stability AI \u2014 has expressed positive sentiments about artificial intelligence usage<\/a> in filmmaking, he calls the prospect of the technology replacing actors \u201chorrifying\u201d and maintains its implementation will inevitably raise the bar for our standards on human-made art.<\/p>\n

In an extended interview with CBS Sunday Morning<\/a> promoting the forthcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash, the three-time Oscar winner segued into talk about generative AI while discussing his affinity for motion capture, which he described as the \u201cpurest form\u201d of performance.<\/p>\n

More from Deadline<\/p>\n

At the time of Avatar\u2018s 2009 release, Cameron recalled his hesitance \u201cto pull the curtain back\u201d on motion capture in hopes the \u201cmagic [would] be unblemished\u201d for audiences. Now calling that decision a \u201cmistake,\u201d he said it led to a misconception around the CGI-assisted tool.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, there was this sense that, \u2018Oh, they\u2019re doing something strange with computers and they\u2019re replacing actors,\u2019 when in fact, once you really drill down and you see what we\u2019re doing, it\u2019s a celebration of the actor-director moment, and the actor-to-actor moment. It\u2019s a celebration of, I call it, the sanctity of the actor\u2019s performance moment,\u201d the Titanic filmmaker explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, go to the other end of the spectrum, and you\u2019ve got generative AI,\u201d he continued, \u201cwhere they can make up a character, they can make up an actor. They can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt. It\u2019s like, no. That\u2019s horrifying to me. That\u2019s the opposite. That\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re not doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

When questioned why he\u2019s strongly opposed to artificially created actors, he said, \u201cI don\u2019t want a computer doing what I pride myself on being able to do with actors. I don\u2019t want to replace actors, I love working with actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Cameron insisted that the nascent tech could be helpful in \u201cmaking VFX cheaper,\u201d a sentiment he\u2019s previously expressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, imaginative films, fantastic films, science-fiction films \u2014 they\u2019re starting to die off as a breed because they\u2019re expensive and the theatrical marketplace has contracted,\u201d the director stated, \u201cand now studios are only comfortable spending those kinds of dollar amounts with blue-chip IP, that which we\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to concerns that gen AI could undermine his work, he answered, \u201cIt might, but it also causes us to have to set our bar to a very disciplined level, and to continue to be out-of-the-box imaginative \u2026 what generative AI can\u2019t do is create something new that\u2019s never been seen. If you think about it, the models \u2014 it\u2019s a magic trick, what they can do is quite astonishing. But the models are trained on everything that\u2019s ever been done before that; it can\u2019t 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\u2019ll get something that is kind of an average of that. So what you can\u2019t have is that individual screenwriter\u2019s unique lived experience and their quirks. You won\u2019t find the idiosyncrasies of a particular actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

He likens the possible effect on art and filmmaking as akin to going \u201cacoustic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe act of performance, the act of actually seeing an artist creating in real time will become sacred, more so,\u201d Cameron concluded.<\/p>\n

As industry professionals reckon with AI potentially encroaching on their livelihoods, numerous high-profile filmmakers \u2014 Guillermo del Toro, Celine Song and Denis Villeneuve among them \u2014\u00a0have slammed the technology and declared it has no place in the moviemaking process.<\/p>\n

Avatar 3<\/a> is due in theaters Dec. 19.<\/p>\n

Best of Deadline<\/p>\n

Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though James Cameron \u2014 who sits on the board of Stability AI \u2014 has expressed positive sentiments about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[3213,220,218,219,1223,61,60,32161,18114,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-168442","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-actors","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-generative-ai","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-james-cameron","16":"tag-stability-ai","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}