When it comes to James Cameron, let’s just say people tend to have opinions. Mostly, because he’s not ever shy about sharing his, often leading to controversy. But here’s a James Cameron opinion that I think most people can get behind. While doing promotion for his upcoming Avatar: Fire and Ash sequel, he made it clear that his film contains no generative AI at all. Given that the Avatar movies are something like 90% CGI, many wondered if Cameron had used AI as well. But based on these recent comments, that’s not the case. Here’s what he told the folks at Comic Book (via Variety):
I’m not negative about generative AI. I just wanted to point out we don’t use it on the Avatar films. We honor and celebrate actors. We don’t replace actors. That’s going to find its level. I think Hollywood will be self-policing on that. We’ll find our way through that. But we can only find our way through it as artists if we exist. So it’s the existential threat from big AI that worries me more than all that stuff.
As someone who made two iconic Terminator films, which heavily warned about the dangers of unregulated artificial intelligence, we’d think Cameron would take an even tougher stance. But I suppose we’ll take whatever we can get from the Titanic director. Still, in other recent interviews, like with CBS Sunday Morning, he seemed more grossed out by the whole generative AI thing going on in the film industry. He said, “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. It’s like, no. That’s horrifying to me.” Jim, it’s pretty horrifying to the rest of us as well. But it’s nice to hear it from “the King of the World.”