‘Avatar’ director James Cameron says generative AI is ‘horrifying’

In Brief

James Cameron’s movies are often astatine the cutting borderline of ocular effects exertion — particularly the “Avatar” films, with their heroic bluish Na’vi characters brought to beingness done show capture.

But that doesn’t marque Cameron a instrumentality of generative AI.

In a CBS Sunday Morning interview tied to the upcoming merchandise of “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the manager acknowledged that show seizure (where an actor’s show is recorded arsenic a template for integer artists) tin dependable akin to genAI. But successful reality, helium said it’s “the opposite.”

“For years, determination was this consciousness that, ‘Oh they’re doing thing unusual with computers, and they’re replacing actors,’” Cameron said. “When successful fact, erstwhile you truly drill down and you spot what we’re doing, it’s a solemnisation of the actor-director moment.”

Indeed, the CBS conception shows members of the “Avatar” formed performing their underwater scenes successful a 250,000-gallon h2o tank.

“Go to the different extremity of the spectrum and you’ve got generative AI, wherever they tin marque up a character, they tin marque up an actor, they tin marque up a show from scratch with a substance prompt,” Cameron added. “No, that’s horrifying … That’s precisely what we’re not doing.”

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