James Cameron Rejects AI Virtual Actors: ‘Horrifying’

Director James Cameron says he’s firmly against using AI-generated actors, calling the results “horrifying.”

In a recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the filmmaker addressed speculation that he might turn to AI for future installments of the popular “Avatar” franchise and made clear he has no interest in doing so.

“For years, there was this sense that, ‘Oh, they’re doing something strange with computers and they’re replacing actors,’ when in fact, once you really drill down and you see what we’re doing, it’s a celebration of the actor-director moment,” Cameron said.

“Now, go to the other end of the spectrum, and you’ve got generative AI, where they can make up a character,” he went on. “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. That’s the opposite. That’s exactly what we’re not doing.”

When asked why he’s against AI-generated actors like Tilly Norwood, the “Titanic” director replied, “I don’t want a computer doing what I pride myself on being able to do with actors. I don’t want to replace actors, I love working with actors.”

Cameron said he was excited about how emerging technology could help the fledgling genres of sci-fi and fantasy films, which are costly to make, without entirely replacing live actors.

He also mentioned some of the pitfalls of AI.

“What generative AI can’t do is create something new that’s never been seen. If you think about it, the models… it’s a magic trick, what they can do is quite astonishing. But the models are trained on everything that’s ever been done before that; it can’t be trained on that which has never been done,” Cameron said. 

“So you will innately see, essentially, all of human art and human experience put into a blender, and you’ll get something that is kind of an average of that. So what you can’t have is that individual screenwriter’s unique lived experience and their quirks. You won’t find the idiosyncrasies of a particular actor.”

The director predicted that live performances will become more “sacred” in the future.