Steven Spielberg on AI in Hollywood: ‘Never’

Steven Spielberg has made his position on artificial intelligence in Hollywood absolutely clear, and there is no ambiguity about where he stands.

Speaking on Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’s IMOpodcast, the legendary director said he has no interest in AI playing any creative role in filmmaking, drawing a firm line between what he considers legitimate use of the technology and what he sees as a fundamental threat to the art form.

“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.”

He was willing to grant the technology some limited utility, helping with location searching, for instance, or saving production teams time on logistical groundwork.

But the moment AI is asked to weigh in on the creative decisions that define a film, he is out entirely.

“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 said.

“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 in good company.

Leonardo DiCaprio voiced similar concerns to Time magazinein December, arguing that genuine art requires a human being at its centre and that anything produced by AI, however impressive technically, lacks the anchoring that makes creative work last.

“I think anything that is going to be authentically thought of as art has to come from the human being,” DiCaprio said, describing AI-generated music mashups as momentarily dazzling but ultimately hollow, brilliant for fifteen minutes before disappearing into “the ether of other internet junk. There’s no anchoring to it. There’s no humanity to it, as brilliant as it is.”

Two of Hollywood’s most respected voices, then, arriving at the same conclusion by different routes. The soul of filmmaking, they both argue, is not something that can be coded.