Steven Spielberg spoke out against AI in filmmaking during a recent appearance on Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’s “IMO” podcast. While the legendary director said he thinks AI can be useful to “find solutions to medical issues,” he doesn’t want it taking over the creative process in Hollywood.
“Where I don’t love AI is where it takes a position or there’s an empty chair at a writer’s table,” Spielberg said. “I’m not willing to substitute, you know, because I don’t really believe in sentience. I don’t believe there is any substitute for the soul. I don’t think that is an algorithm that’s inventible… A computer that thinks it feels more than we feel is anathema to the way I was raised and how I’ll practice my own trade of producing and directing in the future.”
The “Jaws” director said he can see a future where AI can help “save us a lot of legwork” by doing tasks like scouting locations, but he never wants it to tell him or anyone on his team how to make movies.
“Don’t tell me how to write my dialogue for this character. Don’t tell me where the camera has to go. And also don’t tell me what the set should look like, unless AI is simply a tool in a large tool chest of the production designer,” he added. “Use AI as a tool, but do not use AI as the final word on anything creative. That’s where I draw the line.”
Spielberg is hardly the first major Hollywood figure to speak out against the use of AI in movies. Leonardo DiCaprio told Time magazine in December that AI is incapable of having humanity and thus anything it creates can’t be “authentically” considered art.
“I think anything that is going to be authentically thought of as art has to come from the human being,” he said. “Otherwise — haven’t you heard these songs that are mashups that are just absolutely brilliant and you go, ‘Oh my God, this is Michael Jackson doing the Weeknd,’ or ‘This is funk from the A Tribe Called Quest song “Bonita Applebum,” done in, you know, a sort of Al Green soul-song voice, and it’s brilliant.’ And you go, ‘Cool.’ But then it gets its 15 minutes of fame and it just dissipates into the ether of other internet junk. There’s no anchoring to it. There’s no humanity to it, as brilliant as it is.”