George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts
Star Wars director George Lucas defends AI in filmmaking, comparing opponents to horse-and-buggy advocates. He sees AI as inevitable progress, while other directors like Christopher Nolan express skepticism.
George Lucas, the 82-year-old director of Star Wars, has added his voice to a growing number of filmmakers who welcome the increasing use of artificial intelligence tools in movie production. In an interview with A Rabbit's Foot, Lucas stated that AI makes filmmaking much easier. He compared resistance to the technology to people insisting that horses and buggies are superior, despite all the drawbacks of cars. Lucas emphasized that adopting such tools is inevitable, calling it progress and the future.
Lucas is not alone among Star Wars directors in supporting AI. British filmmaker Gareth Edwards, who directed "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" and recently "Jurassic World Rebirth", described generative AI as "a fucking genius at helping you".
However, there are notable holdouts. Christopher Nolan, director of "The Odyssey", recently remarked that he has never seen a technology so successfully adopted by Wall Street and investors yet so thoroughly rejected by the public. He pointed out that young people, in particular, have coined the term "AI slop" and express disdain for AI-generated content.
Steven Soderbergh, whose documentary "John Lennon: The Last Interview" includes AI-generated sequences, expressed ambivalence. He said that AI is neither the solution to everything nor the death of everything, and we are in the very early stages. Five years from now, it might just seem like a fun phase.
Lucas also shared his thoughts on audience testing and focus groups. He said he dislikes focus groups because audiences don't know what they want. If they dislike a character, that's interesting and a filmmaker wants to know why. But studios take the wrong message, letting audiences actually make the movie. Lucas argued that today, it's all about what fans think, which is not the right way to make a movie.
