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James Cameron, who dreamed up the evil Skynet artificial intelligence network in his 1984 film The Terminatorsays an advanced AI system could one day do its job.
“If you have artificial general intelligence [system] Whoever has an ego, who has consciousness, who can say that he is not an artist?” the director, who also made Titanic and that Avatar told the Financial Times series. “We’ve been making art since we’ve been conscious, so why can’t an AGI do that at this point – write a screenplay, direct a film, whatever?”
His comments come amid sharp divisions over AI in Hollywood, where unions are trying to protect jobs from the disruptive technology while studio bosses dream of how it could save time and money.
The hand-wringing began in February when Open AI released a series of high-quality short videos created using its Sora text-to-video technology, stunning talent agents and filmmakers with its speed and slick imagery.
Cameron said the technology has potential but is not yet fully developed. “Everyone freaks out because you can snap your fingers and take a cool picture,” he said. “But you can’t make a movie out of it.”
However, the director said AI technology could eliminate some of the mundane tasks of filmmaking, allowing directors to shoot more shots in less time. That pleases Cameron, who invested 13 years and an estimated $350 million into his last blockbuster. Avatar: The Way of Waterwhich grossed $1.5 billion worldwide after its release in 2022.
“We spend a lot to make a lot,” he said in a Zoom interview from New Zealand, where he is doing the third Avatar Movie. “To be successful with one Avatar To make a film you have to make one of the 10 highest grossing films in history. It’s stupid, but so far it’s working.” Cameron has three of the highest-grossing films of all time.
The filmmaker has always been fascinated by science and technology. He piloted a submarine he designed to the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on earth. And he has spent decades working on the 3D film technology used in his films.
He hopes Apple’s Vision Pro headset will drive demand for his 3D technology, which he plans to license out to others in the industry. He has assembled a group of partners to develop the business.
“I’m pretty excited about a possible renaissance [3D] Content and I plan to take some steps in this area,” he said. “It could be a virtuous circle, or it could be a big bust. Who the hell knows?”
One of Cameron’s most inspiring casting decisions was signing Arnold Schwarzenegger to play a cyborg The Terminator. Although he is open to the role of AI in filmmaking, he doesn’t believe machines could ever do what Schwarzenegger did – deliver a human performance.
“The machine might give you a plausible performance, but it won’t give you the idiosyncratic moment of creation that an actor represents to him and his life experience,” Cameron said. “We are all generative AIs – we are all giant data sets of every experience we have ever had. Generative AI can give you a bitmap and an image, but not emotions.”