Director James Cameron Is Open to Using AI to Reduce Filmmaking Costs

James Cameron is open to the idea of using generative AI to reduce filmmaking costs. 

As Deadline reports, the development is a sharp turn from Cameron’s earlier stance on the technology. And it comes just six months after he joined the board of Stability AI, an artificial intelligence company known for its text-to-image and image-to-video models.

“The goal was to understand the space, to understand what’s on the minds of the developers,” Cameron tells Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth in an episode of his Boz To The Future podcast. “What’s their development cycle? How many resources do you have to throw at it to create a new model that does a purpose-built thing? My goal was to try to integrate [AI] into a VFX [visual effects] workflow.”

Cameron argues that if filmmakers want to make more computer graphics-heavy films, such as Dune, they have to figure out ways to cut costs in half—without laying off staff. 

Generative AI can double filmmakers “speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster, and artists get to move on and do other cool things and then other cool things.”

When asked about using existing material to train AI models, Cameron said regulators and lawyers should worry about output versus input. (In contrast to many of his Hollywood colleagues.)

“A lot of the hesitation in Hollywood and entertainment in general are issues of the source material for the training data…I think people are looking at it all wrong,” Cameron said. “You can’t control my input, you can’t tell me what to view and what to see and where to go. My input is whatever I choose it to be, and whatever has accumulated throughout my life. My output, every script I write, should be judged on whether it’s too close, too plagiaristic, whatever.”

While Cameron supports the use of generative AI in filmmaking, his next movie Avatar: Fire and Ash will reportedly include a title card that says no gen AI was used in creating the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

About Jibin Joseph

Contributor

Jibin is a tech news writer based out of Ahmedabad, India. Previously, he served as the editor of iGeeksBlog and is a self-proclaimed tech enthusiast who loves breaking down complex information for a broader audience.

Read Jibin’s full bio

Read the latest from Jibin Joseph