Filmmaker Steven Spielberg has spoken about AI in filmmaking during a recent appearance on Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’s IMO podcast.
The legendary director, whose name has been all over the shop the last 24 hours with the final trailer and first reactions to his new sci-fi feature “Disclosure Day,” says AI can be useful for certain things such as “solutions to medical issues”.
When it comes to filmmaking though, he says it shouldn’t take over any creative process and is best relegated to being simply a tool in a crew member’s toolbox. When it goes from helping someone to replacing someone, that’s when it becomes a problem:
“Where I don’t love AI is where it takes a position or there’s an empty chair at a writer’s table. 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.”
Spielberg says AI could help save on legwork in certain cases, such as scouting locations, but he never wants it to tell him how to make movies:
“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. 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’s “Disclosure Day” is set to hit cinemas on June 12th.
