Actress Glenn Close recently revealed that she read a book detailing the capabilities of AI and found it both incredible and terrifying.
The ever-growing capabilities of AI remain to be a hot-button topic in the arts as the technology has been used to alter images, sound, music and even create completely new footage. Coca-Cola would recently come under fire for producing a holiday commercial using AI generations. Other projects like the posters for Civil War and the opening credits of Marvel’s Secret Invasion have received criticism for employing the technology at the expense of possible artists in the industry who could have also created the pieces of work.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, actress Glenn Close recently shared her thoughts when she appeared at a gala fundraiser that saluted Sundance Institute icon Michelle Satter last Friday. Close revealed that she had been reading Yuval Noah Harari’s book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. She would describe the book as “incredible” and “more terrifying than anything I’ve read.” THR would then inquire her to weigh in on the looming threat of AI in Hollywood.
Close stated,
Depends on how it’s handled. I don’t want my image or my voice to be reconstructed. I mean, people need jobs. It’s a sad dilemma. Is it progress that less people will work because of it? I don’t know. I think we’re losing one thing that a place like Sundance and what Michelle has done is so important — stories about what it means to be a human being. We have to cling to that. We have to keep coming back and be inspired by things that teach us, that help us with our emotions to know what it means to be human and [to always] to look into somebody else’s eyes — not a screen — but another human being’s eyes. If we lose that, it’ll be a very slippery slope, I’m afraid.”
Other people in the business, like Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader, are very in favor of using AI as a tool. Schrader recently said writers should use AI as he had found the technology to be quite useful, “I’M STUNNED. I just asked chatgpt for ‘an idea for Paul Schrader film.’ Then Paul Thomas Anderson. Then Quentin Tarantino. Then Harmony Korine. Then Ingmar Bergman. Then Rossellini. Lang. Scorsese. Murnau. Capra. Ford. Speilberg. Lynch. Every idea chatgpt came up with (in a few seconds) was good. And original. And fleshed out. Why should writers sit around for months searching for a good idea when AI can provide one in seconds?”
Director Christopher Nolan had also given his take in the past, saying, “I feel that AI can still be a very powerful tool for us. I’m optimistic about that. I really am. But we have to view it as a tool. The person who wields it still has to maintain responsibility for wielding that tool. If we accord AI the status of a human being, the way at some point legally we did with corporations, then yes, we’re going to have huge problems.”
