‘A.I.’ director Steven Spielberg opposed to using AI in front of the camera

When Steven Spielberg directed the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, the technology was the stuff of science fiction, a device to tell a story about the ethics of creating sentient machines.

Today AI is a concrete reality in Hollywood, and Spielberg said he has drawn a line in the sand.

“I don't want AI making any creative decisions I can't make myself,” Spielberg said in an interview with Reuters. “I don't want to use AI as a non-human collaborator in trying to work out my creative thinking.”

Spielberg spoke on Thursday after a ceremony dedicating the Steven Spielberg Theatre on the Universal Studios lot. The event acknowledged the director's decades-long relationship with the studio, which released such films as Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List and E.T. the Extraterrestrial.

The acclaimed director joked that his career at Universal began in 1967 when he  took a tour of the lot as a high school student. He said he hid in the bathroom during a break, and waited for the tour to move on without him, “then I had the entire lot to myself that day”.

“Our hope and dream is that it's not only the place that is founded on his extraordinary legacy,” said Donna Langley, chair of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios.

“It is the place of future hopes and dreams of filmmakers and storytellers who are going to take this company into the next 100 years and the 100 years after that, people who come with a hope and a dream, people who have been inspired by Steven.”

Spielberg's 2001 modest box office hit A.I. Artificial Intelligence was a meditation on love, loss and what it means to be human through the eyes of a discarded humanoid robot. In the Pinocchio-like journey set in a futuristic dystopia, David, the android boy, yearns to be human, searching for love in a world of machines and artificial intelligence. The film hit screens when AI was in its nascent stages and predated the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT by 21 years.

“It wasn't about artificial intelligence as much as it was about sentient existence, and can you love a sentient entity? Can a mother love a robot child?” said Spielberg.

“It was not where AI is taking us today. Eventually there will be a convergence between AI and robotics.”

Spielberg said AI can be a great tool “if used responsibly and morally” to help find a cure for cancer and other diseases.

“I draw a line and it's not a line of cement, it's a bit of line in the sand which gives me some wiggle room to say  I have the option to revise this thinking in the future,” he said.

“Right now I don't want AI making any creative decisions.”

He said he has witnessed how technology can replace human talent while working on the 1993 film Jurassic Park.

Spielberg initially planned to use renowned stop-motion clay animation artist Phil Tippett to create the dinosaurs roaming the island theme park. Visual effects artist Dennis Muren proposed an alternative method, using Industrial Light & Magic's computer-generated imagery to create realistic dinosaurs. The director is an executive producer in Jurassic World: Rebirth which reaches theatres on July 2.

“That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct,” said Spielberg, “so I'm very sensitive to things AI may do to take work away from people.”

Spielberg said he has yet to use AI on his films, though he is open to possible applications of it behind-the-scenes in functions such as budgeting or planning.

“I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now,” Spielberg said. “Not quite yet.”

Reuters