James Cameron's stance on artificial intelligence has evolved over the past few years, and he believes Hollywood needs to embrace it in several different ways.
Cameron joined the stable AI board last year and explained his decision on the “Boz to Future” podcast.
“The goal is to understand the space, understand what developers think,” he said. “What are their goals? What is their development cycle? How much resources do you have to invest in creating a new model that makes something specially built, and my goal is to try to integrate it into the VFX workflow.”
He continued that turning to AI was necessary.
James Cameron hopes Hollywood can implement AI for big-budget movies. (Karwai Tang/Wireimage)
What is artificial intelligence (AI)?
“It's not just assumptions. We have to do that. If we want to keep watching movies that I've always loved, movies that I love making, I'll go to – 'Dune', “Dune: Part Two” or one of my movies or one of my big-effects, CG-heavy movies, we have to find out half the cost.
“Now, this is not about laying off employees in half of VFX's employees. It's twice as fast as you're done on a given shot, so you're faster, your throughput cycles faster, and the artist can keep moving forward, do other cool things, and then do other cool things, and then my vision, and that's my vision.”
Cameron believes that movies are not ultimately the “big goal” of companies like Openai.
He smiled and said, “Their goal is not to make Genai movies. We have a little wart on their ass.”
“The movie is just a tiny application, a tiny use case, and now it's too small. That's the problem. It's going to be a smaller, boutique genai developer community that I can get my attention, 'Hey, I'm having a problem here, I'm called rotoscope here, it's called rotoscope,' otherwise how I negate it.
Cameron believes that AI is applied to film production is only a “small application” of the technology. (Getty Image)
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Rotoscoping is a task that involves drawing or tracking live videos frame by frame.
Cameron says people are not going into film production and VFX to do “Roto's underwater needles[scoping]. And there are many such tasks, “like replacing a motion frame frame by frame for motion capture, he believes AI can make it faster and more cost-effective.”
He said, “This is all common sense, right?
Cameron had previously condemned the use of AI in 2023, citing his 1984 film Terminator as a warning.
The Terminator franchise began with the first film released in October 1984 and starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, the killer Android. (Sunset Boulevard/Bobbys by Getty Image)
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He told CTV Canada at the time: “I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger.”
“I think we're going to have a nuclear weapon race with AI and if we don't build it, others will certainly build it, so it will be upgraded,” Cameron said.
He continued: “You can imagine an artificial intelligence on the battlefield where the whole thing is that humans no longer use humans as fast computers to fight, and you don't have the ability to measure it.”
“I warned you in 1984 that you didn't listen,” Cameron said, referring to the plot of the movie and its sequel, where an active artificial intelligence destroys humans.
One of the sequels in the franchise, the robot props of Terminator 3: The Rise of Machines, predict the grim future of AI to destroy humanity. (Reuters/Mike Black)
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At the time, Cameron said he was not worried about AI replacing creatives, saying, “Who wrote is not a question, is it a question of a good story?”
He said: “I just personally don't believe that an unwise mind is just reflecting on what other embodied minds say – about the life they have, about love, lying, about fear, death, death, death, and then put them all in a sentence salad and reflect on it…I don't believe that this will move the audience.”
On the Boz to Future podcast, Cameron underestimated many of the negative emotions in the entertainment industry about generating AI.
“A lot of the hesitation in Hollywood and entertainment is a matter of raw material for training data, who deserves what, copyright protection and all kinds of things, and I think people are just invisible to see it all,” he said.
AI is a key issue in the 2023 actors and writers strike. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
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He explained that everyone's brain is already working like AI: “You're creating a model to quickly handle every new situation through that model. You're not going to say, 'Wait a minute, I'm going back.' …it doesn't work.”
“I mean, as a screenwriter, as a filmmaker, if I completely copy 'Star Wars', I'll be sued. Actually, I won't even go that far. Everyone would say, it's too much like 'Star Wars' and we'll be sued. I won't even get money. As a screen performer, I know what I know is, I know I know, I know I know, I know I know, I know I know, I know I know, I know I know. Enough, it's my own independent creation.''
Cameron agrees that AI needs to be managed “from a legal perspective”, but he believes the focus should be on the output and whether that output is monetized rather than invested.
“You can't control my input. You can't tell me what to look at, what to look at and where to go. My opinion is everything I choose and everything I have accumulated in my life. It should be judged whether my output is too close or too stealing, he said, admitting that “people are thinking about” the possibility of monetization of libraries and all of that stuff.”
Cameron agreed that legal controls are needed to produce and monetize content generated by AI, but it does not have to be done in input and training. (Stan Honda/AFP via Getty Images)
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Some companies have already allowed AI companies to access their back catalogs.
Lionsgate, the studio behind movies like “The Hunger Games” and “Twilight,” collaborated with AI Research Company Runway last September for “creation and training of new AI models,” which is based on a statement from the company, which is customized by Lionsgate's proprietary film and television content.”
Cameron admits he doesn't like someone using AI to imitate his ideas.
“I think we should dissuade text prompts, saying ‘in James Cameron’ or ‘zac Snyder’ or ‘in style’. Making up on my own style, which makes me a little uncomfortable. “But on the other hand, it’s a bit cool to have ‘in style’ as part of the text prompts. ”
The “Titanic” director admitted that he doesn't necessarily want someone to use AI to imitate him or other directors. (Gabriel Olsen/Getty Images for Absolut Elyx)
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The trend to generate images in a specific style has stood out on social media, causing controversy over copyright and originality.
Recently, the debate has been further exacerbated by the regular sharing of images produced in the style of Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli.
But Cameron didn't see the problem.
“How does Studio Ghibli get hurt by fan art?” Cameron asked in the podcast, noting that fan art has been “forever”.
“You can't stop fan art, you don't want to stop fan art. It's an expression. It's something they reverberate and it makes them feel in this universe. These things should be encouraged.”
The “Alien” director said he supports fan art, just like the recent trend of Ghibli’s AI-generated image. (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Image)
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However, he drew the line with economic gains.
“If someone goes out and try to make money from it in a way that hurts Studio Ghibli and proven, I think this is where you have to draw a line.”
He continued: “What's different than selling T-shirts and T-shirts, is this Luke Skywalker's image? You can't do that. Lucasatt can do that. You can't. You can do it. That's pirated. But if you just want to wear one piece and express your fanaticism for Star Wars, then you won't hurt anything.”
