Matthew McConaughey and Timothée Chalamet are telling young people to brace themselves and lead the entertainment industry through the rise of AI.

During Variety and CNN’s town hall event at the University of Texas at Austin, which reunited the “Dallas Buyers Club” Oscar winner with his “Interstellar” co-star Chalamet, McConaughey explained the thought process behind his recent move to trademark his catchphrase from “Dazed and Confused.”

“It’s coming. It’s already here,” he said, responding to a student’s question about AI. “Don’t deny it. It’s not going to be enough to sit on the sidelines and make the moral plea that, ‘No, this is wrong.’ It’s not gonna last. There’s too much money to be made, and it’s too productive. So I say: Own yourself. Voice, likeness, et cetera. Trademark it. Whatever you gotta do, so when it comes, no one can steal you.”

“A CNN & Variety Town Hall Event: Timothée Chalamet and Matthew McConaughey” airs Saturday, February 21 at 7 p.m. on CNN and streams on the CNN app. Chalamet and McConaughey reunited to discuss the latter’s performance in “Marty Supreme,” for which he is nominated in the best actor Oscar category.

Speaking to Chalamet during the town hall, McConaughey gave an example of the AI scenarios he imagines are coming in the future. “They gotta come to you and go, ‘Timothée, I’d like you to be at my 50th birthday party in five months, and I’m gonna be in the Bahamas. I know you can’t be there in person, but I’m gonna halo you in and I want you as your character in “Marty Supreme,”‘” he said. “They can do that, but they’re gonna have to come to you to go, ‘Can I?’ Or they’re going to be in breach. And you’ll have the chance to be your own agency and go, ‘Yeah, for this amount.’ Or, ‘No.’”

McConaughey also mused on the idea of AI “replacing” actors — and how the technology might factor into awards conversations.

“It’s damn sure going to infiltrate our category. Does it become another category? Will we be, in five years, having ‘the best AI film’? ‘The best AI actor?’” he said. “Maybe. I think that might be the thing; it becomes another category. It’s gonna be in front of us in ways that we don’t even see. It’s going to get so good we’re not going to know the difference. That’s one of the big questions right now: the question of reality. It’s more hazy than ever — in a very exciting way, I think, but also a scary way. Prep for it. Own your own lane, so you at least have agency when it starts to trespass.”

Chalamet also weighed in, saying to the college students in the audience that Gen Z will bear the brunt of teaching society how to live with AI, though older generations must support them in that.

“It’s going to be all of our war to wage — sounds confrontational, I don’t mean to say it like that — but it’s a dual responsibility,” Chalamet said. “Unfortunately for your generation, I think it’s going to be you guys that figure out how to integrate it. There’s a huge [responsibility for] people that are positions of power now, like myself, like Matthew, to safekeep so that doors stay open. Some of the roles I got that helped kickstart my career, I wouldn’t even know if they’re available today.”

“There’s a level of fatalism I feel,” Chalamet continued. “It will be on your generation, and mine to an extent, to know how to ethically integrate it, if at all, or do away with it. But the fatalist in me feels like this stuff is coming. And the dreamer in me wants to go, ‘Hey, if it enables a 19-year-old to produce something they couldn’t otherwise because there’s gatekeepers standing in the way, then [good].’ But ultimately, it’s not my place to say.”

Hearkening back to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, Chalamet said, “In the last Screen Actors Guild negotiation that Fran Drescher tried to head off with the studios, it was a dicey. They didn’t really get the protections for the Screen Actors Guild that she was after. [AI is] a hard thing to advocate against. It would be like how [silent era filmmakers] said, ‘No, sound is fucked up, we can’t do that.’ Or when black-and-white went to color. ‘No, color’s fucked up.’ That would be [the studios’] argument.”

Chalamet concluded that though his current focus is on preparing for the potential harms of AI, he believes the industry will find a healthy way to embrace it.

“I wanna keep the doors open for you guys. But someone’s gonna figure out how to do it all at once,” he said. “I’m fiercely protective of actors and artists in this industry. And equally, whatever tide is coming, it’s coming.”

See a clip of McConaughey and Chalamet’s conversation about AI below.