Star Wars Creator George Lucas Is Pro-AI For Filmmaking
Previously, he's interviewed breakout indie developers, broken big news stories, reviewed massive releases and recounted his time living as a humble woodsman in Oblivion.
A lifelong gamer, Jack is primarily interested in RPGs and narrative experiences. He's also been playing League of Legends for a decade, unfortunately.
Star Wars creator George Lucas is in favour of generative artificial intelligence for filmmaking — a controversial stance on a contentious topic and indicative of a conversation that's going to play out ad nauseam in the coming years.
It's hardly surprising, given Lucas was a pioneer of special effects, having founded Industrial Light and Magic and THX. Though I'd argue the rise of AI isn't quite comparable to the advent of special effects in Hollywood, Lucas has always been on the cutting edge of movie-making technology, and so his stance on AI isn't surprising given that context.
Star Wars Creator George Lucas Believes AI Is The Future
"Artificial intelligence means it's much easier for us to make movies," Lucas said in an interview with A Rabbit's Foot. "It's very much like sitting here saying, 'Well, I believe the horse and buggy is really where it's at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there's all kinds of problems with them, and pretty soon they'll be making them into tanks, and then they'll be killing people. It's terrible.' There's nothing you can do about it. That's progress, it's the future."
I can certainly see a future where AI is used for automating some of the minutiae of post-processing, but I can't see a world where the technology becomes a driving force behind the creative process; there's too much heart in the act of creation for all but the most cynical of filmmakers to abandon it.
Lucas' stance is in sharp contrast to that of fellow filmmaker Christoper Nolan, whose latest film, The Odyssey, is set to release on Friday. Nolan recently made headlines for slamming the technology, saying, "The interesting thing with AI is I've never seen a technology that's been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors and tech companies that the public has so thoroughly rejected."
"It's just sort of an odd thing. Young people in particular, they coined this term 'AI slop'. There's a sort of disdain for things AI," he continued. "But I think the idea that it replaces human beings wholesale and human creativity, to me, it's nonsense."
As you can imagine, my thinking is in line with Nolan's. AI is inherently derivative; the technology can't create, only amalgamate. That, combined with a portion of the public that's actively hostile towards it, means human-led creation isn't going anywhere.
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