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"plaintext": "Originally posted at Cinema Ex Machina, if you enjoyed this article - please consider subscribing."
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"plaintext": "consider myself a small fish in a big pond and as one learns every day as a filmmaker: you don't know anything, and learning is a gigantic part of this profession. I've been listening to colleagues and peers about what they think of AI but here, I want to step back and hear what the A+, top-tier creatives in the world are saying about this technology."
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"plaintext": "The following is a list of 20 powerhouses in Hollywood and their latest stances on AI."
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"plaintext": "I only pulled folks who have an actual quote. For example: Quentin Tarantino hasn't said anything directly (or I couldn't find it) but from past statements, and his filmography, I think we can infer what he thinks of computer generated storytelling."
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{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "I didn't dare to infer and therefore QT has been left off this list."
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"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "The following are the actual words from the people shaping our filmmaking culture. They're in no particular order and I wanted to keep commentary to a minimum - this is about what our heroes think, so I decided to listen."
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"plaintext": "David Fincher"
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"uri": "https://www.gq.com/story/david-fincher-hasnt-seen-fight-club-in-20-years-and-doesnt-want-to?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "I think AI's a really powerful tool. And for my money, I have not heard an AI Beatles song that compares to \"Eleanor Rigby.\" So until somebody plays an AI song that knocks me out ... maybe that's just where we're at now, and I may be eating my words in a year, but I think ultimately, the thing that we respond to in poetry, and writing, and songwriting, and photography, is the personal bent. The thing that's making it human. - GQ, 2023"
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"plaintext": "He also used it to fix a minor pan issue in Se7en and called it \"handy\" for cleaning up dialogue in his film The Killer. Read more here at Slashfilm."
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"plaintext": "Steven Spielberg"
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"plaintext": "I do not want AI to make creative decisions that I cannot make myself. And I don’t want to use AI as a non-human colleague in order to work out my creative thinking. - News18, 2025"
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"plaintext": "I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now. Not quite yet. That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct,\" said Spielberg. \"So, I'm very sensitive to things that AI may do to take work away from people.\" - Reuters, 2025"
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"plaintext": "Anthony and Joe Russo"
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"plaintext": "The Russo brothers are building a high-tech studio to help filmmakers use AI to make films, shows and videogames."
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"uri": "https://www.techradar.com/streaming/entertainment/were-optimists-ai-enthusiasts-joe-and-anthony-russo-defend-its-use-in-movies-and-tv-shows-but-admit-there-are-very-real-dangers-around-its-application?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "While the siblings are enthusiastic about its implementation in the arts sector, they're well aware that it can and will be abused by people and companies who don't have the entertainment business' best interests at heart. - TechRadar, 2025"
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"plaintext": "They used AI for voice modulation, openly defended it's use but audiences thought differently, from the daily beast: Netflix Users Outraged Over How Bad ‘The Electric State’ Is."
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"plaintext": "Martin Scorsese"
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"plaintext": "I do think that the manufactured content isn’t really cinema. It’s almost like AI making a film. - Interesting Engineering, 2023"
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]
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"plaintext": "What he means by manufactured content is the studios over-reliance on superhero and franchise films. He thinks it's damaging our culture. He's worried that this manufactured content is telling the younger generation that a superhero film is the only thing a film is. A gigantic blockbuster:"
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"plaintext": "They already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves. And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema. - GQ, 2023"
}
]
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "The fact he's not even necessarily talking about AI but the cape-slop that's been charging at us before AI even existed says a lot on where he falls with the tool."
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"plaintext": "Greta Gerwig"
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"uri": "https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/barbie-greta-gerwig-interview-margot-robbie-ryan-gosling-superhero-movie-1234769344/?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "I’m living through this moment like everybody else is, especially in terms of the AI thing, which is terrifying and exciting. I don’t know what to say about it. I guess it’s clearly a tool that hopefully can be used to help. - Rolling Stone, 2023"
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"plaintext": "I think it’s incredibly important to protect creative people — writers and directors and actors — because I don’t think what they can do can be replicated. We have to set some very firm ground rules moving forward. Because otherwise, we’re looking at a world that becomes a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. - Rolling Stone, 2023"
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"plaintext": "I can’t think of anything coming up that is bigger and more important to us right now than confronting this generative AI issue,” Cameron told Screen Daily. “It is critical that we master it and control it so that it remains an artistic tool and it doesn’t replace artists.\""
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"plaintext": "“We haven’t used any [AI in the Avatar films], like literally zero. I think people think we do, but we don’t. We use computers, but it’s all artist-driven. It’s all actor-driven and performance-driven,” Cameron said in an interview last week with Australia’s ABC News In-Depth. “In the future, if we allow this new technology, generative AI, to be abused in filmmaking, we can replace actors. I have no intention of doing that. It wouldn’t be interesting to me. My whole creative process is the writing and then standing it up and playing the scenes and the scene work that I do with actors. To me, that’s the sacred starting point for everything.” - Mars Mag, 2025"
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"plaintext": "Right now everybody's kind of terrified to greenlight big expensive films, and a big part of that expense is visual effects. Is that a potential solution? I'm going to explore that. But what I will never do is replace what I think of as the Sacred Creative Act, which is writing, creating characters conceptually, working with actors to bring those characters to life, then working with artists to put them in a world. For me, that must never change. - IGN, 2025"
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"plaintext": "With the labor disputes going on in Hollywood right now, a lot of it — when we talk about AI, when we talk about these issues — they’re all ultimately born from the same thing, which is when you innovate with technology, you have to maintain accountability. - Variety, 2023"
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"content": [
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"plaintext": "“Do you think we’ll keep re-examining Oppenheimer? As our understanding of quantum physics continues, as our taming of the atom continues,” Todd asked at one point in the panel."
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"plaintext": "“I hope so,” Nolan stated. “When I talk to the leading researchers in the field of AI right now, for example, they literally refer to this — right now — as their Oppenheimer moment. They’re looking to history to say, ‘What are the responsibilities for scientists developing new technologies that may have unintended consequences?'” - Variety, 2023"
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"content": [
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"plaintext": "The biggest danger of AI is that we attribute these godlike characteristics to it and therefore let ourselves off the hook. I don’t know what the mythological underpinnings of this are, but throughout history there’s this tendency of human beings to create false idols, to mold something in our own image and then say we’ve got godlike powers because we did that."
}
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"plaintext": "I identify the danger as the abdication of responsibility."
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"plaintext": "I feel that AI can still be a very powerful tool for us. I’m optimistic about that. I really am, but we have to view it as a tool. The person who wields it still has to maintain responsibility for wielding that tool. If we accord AI the status of a human being, the way at some point legally we did with corporations, then yes, we’re going to have huge problems.” - Variety, 2023"
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"plaintext": "Matthew McConaughey"
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"uri": "https://variety.com/2026/film/news/matthew-mcconaughey-timothee-chalamet-ai-actors-oscars-1236667017/?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "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. - Variety, 2026"
}
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"plaintext": "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?' 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. - Variety, 2026"
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]
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"plaintext": "Tom Cruise"
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"plaintext": "Before talks between the Hollywood actors’ union and major film and TV studios broke down, the SAG-AFTRA union enlisted Tom Cruise to lobby on behalf of its members, according to the Hollywood Reporter."
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"plaintext": "At issue was the use of artificial intelligence, or AI. According to the report, superstar Cruise joined a negotiating session in June to discuss concerns about the use of AI to replace actors - CNN, 2023"
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"level": 2,
"plaintext": "Roger Deakins"
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"uri": "https://www.worldofreel.com/blog/2025/11/18/roger-deakins-i-dont-think-ai-is-cheating?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "I don’t think [using] AI is cheating, as long as you have something to say. - World of Reel, 2025"
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"plaintext": "Taika Waititti"
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"facets": [
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"uri": "https://ltx.studio/blog/taika-waititi-on-future-of-storytelling?ref=cinemaexmachina.com#:~:text=What%20did%20Taika,artist%20in%20control."
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"plaintext": "Taika Waititi stated he's not scared for his job and believes AI is a good tool. He emphasized how LTX Studio can generate images quickly to show collaborators what's in his head instead of spending time explaining, while still requiring guidance like any good performance. AI can accelerate the creative process while keeping the artist in control. - LTX Studio, 2025"
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"plaintext": "I said ‘Hello. Can you please explain to me how Hollywood is failing to address and remedy the issue of diversity and inclusivity in film and television?” he says, snorting. Waititi says the answer the AI gave him “scrolls for ages” and included key points relating to gatekeeping, performative activism, stereotyping and, whitewashing. “If AI can do that in eight seconds and it gets it, what’s taking so long? - Junkee, 2023"
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"plaintext": "James Gunn"
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"content": [
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"plaintext": "AI was not a part of the production. I honestly don’t know that much about AI, I’ve never used Chad GPT or anything like that. But I’m actually, I’m wary of AI, like a lot of people are, but I’m also very excited about what it means for medicine, what it means for law enforcement, what it means for a lot of areas of life that AI can actually help us."
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"plaintext": "We can have a big spectacle film that it’s most, at its core, is about loving one another and about the connections between human beings, and I want people to walk into this movie and walk out feeling better about the person they sat next to than when they walked in. And I think, in the same way, that AI can be used for benevolent purposes and hopefully won’t be taking us all over in a few years. We’ll see. - The Direct, 2023"
}
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"plaintext": "Darren Aronofsky"
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"plaintext": "He also founded Primordial Soup, an AI-driven studio whose first film is Eliza McNitt’s “Ancestra”, an eight-minute short about childbirth. “Primordial Soup is a story company first,” says Aronofsky. “But we’re interested in playing with new tools. All these AI companies are making models that can make incredible images, but, right now, those shots don’t add up to much. Primordial Soup is trying to figure out: how do you turn those into stories?”"
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"uri": "https://www.dazeddigital.com/film-tv/article/68503/1/darren-aronofsky-caught-stealing-ai-chatgpt-austin-butler-zoe-kravitz?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "“People are nervous,” he says. “There’s a bit of grief because the way we used to make films is changing. I feel all those feelings. But I’ve always been curious about technology. I think that filmmaking is a technology business, first.” - Dazed, 2025"
}
]
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"level": 2,
"plaintext": "Antoine Fuqua"
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"content": [
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"plaintext": "We’re creatures of habit, I remember when I started in videos and commercials, I shot on film. Digital was a thing we all kicked and screamed about. Turns out, it’s fantastic. It’s another paintbrush we can use to do our work. AI’s the same thing."
}
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"uri": "https://variety.com/2024/film/news/antoine-fuqua-roland-emmerich-comic-con-1236085971/?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "AI doesn’t replace human feelings and human emotions, he continued, There’s things that can only happen in the moment with another human being that no computer can ever achieve. - Variety, 2024"
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"plaintext": "Roland Emmerich"
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"plaintext": "I think it’s a tool. That’s what it is. It just makes your job as a director more easy, that’s what’s really important, because it’s not like this AI does everything for you. You still need to choose the right actor, shoot the right scenes, do the right thing. And then AI can really help you in doing that. - Variety, 2024"
}
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"plaintext": "Reese Witherspoon"
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"plaintext": "It’s so, so important that women are involved in AI because it will be the future of filmmaking. And you can be sad and lament it all you want, but the change is here. It will never be a lack of creativity and ingenuity and actual physical manual building of things. It might diminish, but it’s always going to be the highest importance in art and in expression of self. - Variety, 2025"
}
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"plaintext": "Guillermo del Toro"
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"plaintext": "Fuck AI."
}
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"content": [
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"uri": "https://variety.com/2025/film/news/guillermo-del-toro-ai-frankenstein-gotham-award-1236596868/?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "My concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity. I think that's what drives most of the world's worst features. But I did want it to have the arrogance of Victor Frankenstein be similar in some ways to the tech bros. He's kind of blind, creating something without considering the consequences and I think we have to take a pause and consider where we're going. - Variety, 2025"
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"plaintext": "AI, particularly generative AI — I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I'm 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak. ... The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, \"What is your stance on AI?\" And my answer was very short. I said, \"I'd rather die.\" - NPR, 2025"
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"level": 2,
"plaintext": "George Miller"
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"plaintext": "A similar debate unfolded in the mid-19th century with the arrival of photography. Art has to evolve. And while photography became its own form, painting continued. Both changed, but both endured. Art changed. - Variety, 2025"
}
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"plaintext": "Paul Schrader"
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"plaintext": "Yeah, it’s just a tool. When you’re an author, you have to describe someone’s reaction. You use a code—you use a code of words, a certain number of letters, and so forth, and you express their facial reaction. An actor has their own code. Well, now you’re a pixelator, and you can create the face, and you can create the emotion on the face, and you can sculpt it the same way an author sculpts the reaction in a novel or a story. - Vanity Fair, 2025"
}
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"plaintext": "Denis Villeneuve"
},
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"content": [
{
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"plaintext": "It is very moving for me."
}
]
},
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"content": [
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"plaintext": "I work with tremendous artists. The thing about cinema I love the most is this collective act of creativity, where you try to make poetry … at the end of the day it is cinema, it is storytelling. It is very moving for me to make it together."
}
]
},
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"plaintext": "That is why, if ever one day we came up with … you can create a movie just with a computer, maybe it’s going to be interesting in some ways, but I will absolutely miss the collective act of creativity, which is so beautifully human. - Far Out Magazine, 2024"
}
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"plaintext": "Zack Snyder"
},
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"content": [
{
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"plaintext": "I would say to any filmmakers out there, whether it's a movie or a painting or a photograph, whatever you're doing, you are also a prism for the thing. AI doesn't have the ability. I, as a viewer, I want this prism between me and the reality that the filmmaker puts up."
}
]
},
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"facets": [
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"plaintext": "You have your experience. You walk around the world, you see things, you feel things. And when you make a movie, it goes through you and onto the screen. I as a human being want that. I want your touch. Your personality. Your way of seeing on screen so I can have an empathetic human experience by what you put on screen. I think that is the way I try to think about the way I photograph things. - The Direct, 2023"
}
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"plaintext": "Stellan Skarsgård"
},
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"content": [
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"plaintext": "For thousands of years, people have been very much interested in people. Describing people is what theater does, what film does — and what we do best."
}
]
},
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"content": [
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "In film — even better than in television — you can describe all the unspoken words, all the unspoken facets of a relationship that are almost impossible to explain but are still there. We will always be curious about other people. That curiosity will never leave us."
}
]
},
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"content": [
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"facets": [
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"uri": "https://variety.com/2026/film/awards/stellan-skarsgard-oscars-robin-williams-lars-von-trier-ai-1236667958/?ref=cinemaexmachina.com"
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"plaintext": "What form it takes, how it will be produced — maybe some people will be happy enough with what AI can produce, and some will not. But I think the main problem for the moving image industry today is the concentration of capital. And the concentration of capital is the problem for every industry, for humanity. AI is nothing without the men behind it. AI is owned by the tech barons standing right behind power. - Variety, 2026"
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"plaintext": "In Conclusion"
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"plaintext": "The nuanced conversations I've had with peers and colleagues seems to translate to the top professionals working in this industry. Yes, there are some hard no's and some absolute yes's but I'm finding most folks find themselves somewhere in the middle and it seems to be the same with the creatives at the very top."
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"plaintext": "As this technology develops, it'll be important to keep checking in with our heroes and CXM aims to do that. If this article was valuable to you, please subscribe or consider becoming a supporter. "
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "Until next time."
},
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"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "And for a laugh:"
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"plaintext": "Originally posted at Cinema Ex Machina, if you enjoyed this article - please consider subscribing."
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"description": "What do Hollywoods A+ creatives think of AI? A full run-down of 20 of your heroes.",
"path": "/a/3mlhlijcc6l23-how-hollywoods-most-influential-creatives-are-responding-to-ai",
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"textContent": "Originally posted at Cinema Ex Machina, if you enjoyed this article - please consider subscribing.\nconsider myself a small fish in a big pond and as one learns every day as a filmmaker: you don't know anything, and learning is a gigantic part of this profession. I've been listening to colleagues and peers about what they think of AI but here, I want to step back and hear what the A+, top-tier creatives in the world are saying about this technology.\nThe following is a list of 20 powerhouses in Hollywood and their latest stances on AI.\nI only pulled folks who have an actual quote. For example: Quentin Tarantino hasn't said anything directly (or I couldn't find it) but from past statements, and his filmography, I think we can infer what he thinks of computer generated storytelling.\nI didn't dare to infer and therefore QT has been left off this list.\nThe following are the actual words from the people shaping our filmmaking culture. They're in no particular order and I wanted to keep commentary to a minimum - this is about what our heroes think, so I decided to listen.\nDavid Fincher\n> I think AI's a really powerful tool. And for my money, I have not heard an AI Beatles song that compares to \"Eleanor Rigby.\" So until somebody plays an AI song that knocks me out ... maybe that's just where we're at now, and I may be eating my words in a year, but I think ultimately, the thing that we respond to in poetry, and writing, and songwriting, and photography, is the personal bent. The thing that's making it human. - GQ, 2023\nHe also used it to fix a minor pan issue in Se7en and called it \"handy\" for cleaning up dialogue in his film The Killer. Read more here at Slashfilm.\nSteven Spielberg\n> I do not want AI to make creative decisions that I cannot make myself. And I don’t want to use AI as a non-human colleague in order to work out my creative thinking. - News18, 2025\n> I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now. Not quite yet. That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct,\" said Spielberg. \"So, I'm very sensitive to things that AI may do to take work away from people.\" - Reuters, 2025\nAnthony and Joe Russo\nThe Russo brothers are building a high-tech studio to help filmmakers use AI to make films, shows and videogames.\n> While the siblings are enthusiastic about its implementation in the arts sector, they're well aware that it can and will be abused by people and companies who don't have the entertainment business' best interests at heart. - TechRadar, 2025\nThey used AI for voice modulation, openly defended it's use but audiences thought differently, from the daily beast: Netflix Users Outraged Over How Bad ‘The Electric State’ Is.\nMartin Scorsese\n> I do think that the manufactured content isn’t really cinema. It’s almost like AI making a film. - Interesting Engineering, 2023\nWhat he means by manufactured content is the studios over-reliance on superhero and franchise films. He thinks it's damaging our culture. He's worried that this manufactured content is telling the younger generation that a superhero film is the only thing a film is. A gigantic blockbuster:\n> They already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves. And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema. - GQ, 2023\nThe fact he's not even necessarily talking about AI but the cape-slop that's been charging at us before AI even existed says a lot on where he falls with the tool.\nGreta Gerwig\n> I’m living through this moment like everybody else is, especially in terms of the AI thing, which is terrifying and exciting. I don’t know what to say about it. I guess it’s clearly a tool that hopefully can be used to help. - Rolling Stone, 2023\n> I think it’s incredibly important to protect creative people — writers and directors and actors — because I don’t think what they can do can be replicated. We have to set some very firm ground rules moving forward. Because otherwise, we’re looking at a world that becomes a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. - Rolling Stone, 2023\nJames Cameron\n> I can’t think of anything coming up that is bigger and more important to us right now than confronting this generative AI issue,” Cameron told Screen Daily. “It is critical that we master it and control it so that it remains an artistic tool and it doesn’t replace artists.\"\n> “We haven’t used any [AI in the Avatar films], like literally zero. I think people think we do, but we don’t. We use computers, but it’s all artist-driven. It’s all actor-driven and performance-driven,” Cameron said in an interview last week with Australia’s ABC News In-Depth. “In the future, if we allow this new technology, generative AI, to be abused in filmmaking, we can replace actors. I have no intention of doing that. It wouldn’t be interesting to me. My whole creative process is the writing and then standing it up and playing the scenes and the scene work that I do with actors. To me, that’s the sacred starting point for everything.” - Mars Mag, 2025\n> Right now everybody's kind of terrified to greenlight big expensive films, and a big part of that expense is visual effects. Is that a potential solution? I'm going to explore that. But what I will never do is replace what I think of as the Sacred Creative Act, which is writing, creating characters conceptually, working with actors to bring those characters to life, then working with artists to put them in a world. For me, that must never change. - IGN, 2025\nChristopher Nolan\n> With the labor disputes going on in Hollywood right now, a lot of it — when we talk about AI, when we talk about these issues — they’re all ultimately born from the same thing, which is when you innovate with technology, you have to maintain accountability. - Variety, 2023\n> “Do you think we’ll keep re-examining Oppenheimer? As our understanding of quantum physics continues, as our taming of the atom continues,” Todd asked at one point in the panel.\n> “I hope so,” Nolan stated. “When I talk to the leading researchers in the field of AI right now, for example, they literally refer to this — right now — as their Oppenheimer moment. They’re looking to history to say, ‘What are the responsibilities for scientists developing new technologies that may have unintended consequences?'” - Variety, 2023\n> The biggest danger of AI is that we attribute these godlike characteristics to it and therefore let ourselves off the hook. I don’t know what the mythological underpinnings of this are, but throughout history there’s this tendency of human beings to create false idols, to mold something in our own image and then say we’ve got godlike powers because we did that.\n> I identify the danger as the abdication of responsibility.\n> I feel that AI can still be a very powerful tool for us. I’m optimistic about that. I really am, but we have to view it as a tool. The person who wields it still has to maintain responsibility for wielding that tool. If we accord AI the status of a human being, the way at some point legally we did with corporations, then yes, we’re going to have huge problems.” - Variety, 2023\nMatthew McConaughey\n> 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. - Variety, 2026\n> 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?' 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. - Variety, 2026\nTom Cruise\n> Before talks between the Hollywood actors’ union and major film and TV studios broke down, the SAG-AFTRA union enlisted Tom Cruise to lobby on behalf of its members, according to the Hollywood Reporter.\n> At issue was the use of artificial intelligence, or AI. According to the report, superstar Cruise joined a negotiating session in June to discuss concerns about the use of AI to replace actors - CNN, 2023\nRoger Deakins\n> I don’t think [using] AI is cheating, as long as you have something to say. - World of Reel, 2025\nTaika Waititti\n> Taika Waititi stated he's not scared for his job and believes AI is a good tool. He emphasized how LTX Studio can generate images quickly to show collaborators what's in his head instead of spending time explaining, while still requiring guidance like any good performance. AI can accelerate the creative process while keeping the artist in control. - LTX Studio, 2025\n> I said ‘Hello. Can you please explain to me how Hollywood is failing to address and remedy the issue of diversity and inclusivity in film and television?” he says, snorting. Waititi says the answer the AI gave him “scrolls for ages” and included key points relating to gatekeeping, performative activism, stereotyping and, whitewashing. “If AI can do that in eight seconds and it gets it, what’s taking so long? - Junkee, 2023\nJames Gunn\n> AI was not a part of the production. I honestly don’t know that much about AI, I’ve never used Chad GPT or anything like that. But I’m actually, I’m wary of AI, like a lot of people are, but I’m also very excited about what it means for medicine, what it means for law enforcement, what it means for a lot of areas of life that AI can actually help us.\n> We can have a big spectacle film that it’s most, at its core, is about loving one another and about the connections between human beings, and I want people to walk into this movie and walk out feeling better about the person they sat next to than when they walked in. And I think, in the same way, that AI can be used for benevolent purposes and hopefully won’t be taking us all over in a few years. We’ll see. - The Direct, 2023\nDarren Aronofsky\n> He also founded Primordial Soup, an AI-driven studio whose first film is Eliza McNitt’s “Ancestra”, an eight-minute short about childbirth. “Primordial Soup is a story company first,” says Aronofsky. “But we’re interested in playing with new tools. All these AI companies are making models that can make incredible images, but, right now, those shots don’t add up to much. Primordial Soup is trying to figure out: how do you turn those into stories?”\n> “People are nervous,” he says. “There’s a bit of grief because the way we used to make films is changing. I feel all those feelings. But I’ve always been curious about technology. I think that filmmaking is a technology business, first.” - Dazed, 2025\nAntoine Fuqua\n> We’re creatures of habit, I remember when I started in videos and commercials, I shot on film. Digital was a thing we all kicked and screamed about. Turns out, it’s fantastic. It’s another paintbrush we can use to do our work. AI’s the same thing.\n> AI doesn’t replace human feelings and human emotions, he continued, There’s things that can only happen in the moment with another human being that no computer can ever achieve. - Variety, 2024\nRoland Emmerich\n> I think it’s a tool. That’s what it is. It just makes your job as a director more easy, that’s what’s really important, because it’s not like this AI does everything for you. You still need to choose the right actor, shoot the right scenes, do the right thing. And then AI can really help you in doing that. - Variety, 2024\nReese Witherspoon\n> It’s so, so important that women are involved in AI because it will be the future of filmmaking. And you can be sad and lament it all you want, but the change is here. It will never be a lack of creativity and ingenuity and actual physical manual building of things. It might diminish, but it’s always going to be the highest importance in art and in expression of self. - Variety, 2025\nGuillermo del Toro\n> Fuck AI.\n> My concern is not artificial intelligence, but natural stupidity. I think that's what drives most of the world's worst features. But I did want it to have the arrogance of Victor Frankenstein be similar in some ways to the tech bros. He's kind of blind, creating something without considering the consequences and I think we have to take a pause and consider where we're going. - Variety, 2025\n> AI, particularly generative AI — I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I'm 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak. ... The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, \"What is your stance on AI?\" And my answer was very short. I said, \"I'd rather die.\" - NPR, 2025\nGeorge Miller\n> A similar debate unfolded in the mid-19th century with the arrival of photography. Art has to evolve. And while photography became its own form, painting continued. Both changed, but both endured. Art changed. - Variety, 2025\nPaul Schrader\n> Yeah, it’s just a tool. When you’re an author, you have to describe someone’s reaction. You use a code—you use a code of words, a certain number of letters, and so forth, and you express their facial reaction. An actor has their own code. Well, now you’re a pixelator, and you can create the face, and you can create the emotion on the face, and you can sculpt it the same way an author sculpts the reaction in a novel or a story. - Vanity Fair, 2025\nDenis Villeneuve\n> It is very moving for me.\n> I work with tremendous artists. The thing about cinema I love the most is this collective act of creativity, where you try to make poetry … at the end of the day it is cinema, it is storytelling. It is very moving for me to make it together.\n> That is why, if ever one day we came up with … you can create a movie just with a computer, maybe it’s going to be interesting in some ways, but I will absolutely miss the collective act of creativity, which is so beautifully human. - Far Out Magazine, 2024\nZack Snyder\n> I would say to any filmmakers out there, whether it's a movie or a painting or a photograph, whatever you're doing, you are also a prism for the thing. AI doesn't have the ability. I, as a viewer, I want this prism between me and the reality that the filmmaker puts up.\n> You have your experience. You walk around the world, you see things, you feel things. And when you make a movie, it goes through you and onto the screen. I as a human being want that. I want your touch. Your personality. Your way of seeing on screen so I can have an empathetic human experience by what you put on screen. I think that is the way I try to think about the way I photograph things. - The Direct, 2023\nStellan Skarsgård\n> For thousands of years, people have been very much interested in people. Describing people is what theater does, what film does — and what we do best.\n> In film — even better than in television — you can describe all the unspoken words, all the unspoken facets of a relationship that are almost impossible to explain but are still there. We will always be curious about other people. That curiosity will never leave us.\n> What form it takes, how it will be produced — maybe some people will be happy enough with what AI can produce, and some will not. But I think the main problem for the moving image industry today is the concentration of capital. And the concentration of capital is the problem for every industry, for humanity. AI is nothing without the men behind it. AI is owned by the tech barons standing right behind power. - Variety, 2026\nIn Conclusion\nThe nuanced conversations I've had with peers and colleagues seems to translate to the top professionals working in this industry. Yes, there are some hard no's and some absolute yes's but I'm finding most folks find themselves somewhere in the middle and it seems to be the same with the creatives at the very top.\nAs this technology develops, it'll be important to keep checking in with our heroes and CXM aims to do that. If this article was valuable to you, please subscribe or consider becoming a supporter. \nUntil next time.\nAnd for a laugh:\nOriginally posted at Cinema Ex Machina, if you enjoyed this article - please consider subscribing.",
"title": "How Hollywood's Most Influential Creatives Are Responding to AI"
}