Leonardo DiCaprio just joined the ranks of Tinseltown titans who have sounded the alarm over artificial intelligence’s increasing role within the entertainment industry, suggesting that AI-generated content will never quite be able to capture the heart and soul of what constitutes ‘art’.
The Oscar-winning actor, freshly minted as Time magazine’s entertainer of the year, did not mince words about the limits of the technology in his interview with the magazine.
As much as he sincerely believes that “talented and experienced people” might very well lose their livelihoods to AI, DiCaprio’s more profound objection rests on something far more basic: the lack of humanity in machine-generated work.
Leonardo DiCaprio looks at AI’s potential, eventually serving as an enhancement tool that would allow emerging filmmakers to create visual and special effects never seen before.
Still, he decidedly draws a line in the sand for the purpose of authenticity: anything worthy of being called art, he insists, has to come from a human being.
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The actor explained his point by referring to examples of AIs creating musical mashups to catching a quick glimpse online. “Just think of Michael singing a Weeknd tune or A Tribe Called Quest’s ‘Bonita Applebum’ as a soul ballad a la Al Green,” DiCaprio said.
“They are impressive, they could even go viral for a quick second. Leonardo DiCaprio thinks they are ultimately shallow because they lack staying power.”
“It gets its 15 minutes of fame, and then it just dissipates into the ether of other Internet junk,” DiCaprio said. “It has no anchoring to it. It has no humanity to it, even though it is brilliant.”
DiCaprio’s remarks contribute to the swelling tide of pushback from big-name filmmakers who’ve lately broken their silence to protest the role of AI in their domain. His measured response also sets his remarks apart from more colorful objections from his peers, even as his position is, naturally, the same across the Hollywood creative class.
Perhaps no one was more quotable at the Gotham Awards than Guillermo del Toro, when he just flat-out stated ‘fuck AI.’ Two-time Oscar winner del Toro has expressed how he feels about his stance on AI in an NPR interview.
Del Toro wants it to be understood that his disdain for AI is not merely a gesture but an imperative. Del Toro is currently living his life at an astonishing 61 years young. When someone contacted him about his sentiments towards AI, he was adamant when he stated, ‘I’d rather die.’
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James Cameron, also known for his boundary-pushing technology approach to his “Avatar” series, has also taken a strict stance on the matter. He banned the use of generative AI to make his “Avatar” sequels. His reason for this has heavily focused on the respect for the profession of acting whenever possible: “We honor and celebrate actors. We don’t replace actors.”
Actress Emma Thompson found the humor to be characteristic of a conversation she had with “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” audience in October. The “Sense & Sensibility” screenwriter, who has an Oscar, expressed “intense irritation” with AI technology. This is especially true for her as a writer.
Thompson goes on to describe her writing process, using her longhand on a pad in an attempt to get the workings of her brain to connect to the actions of her hands, to believe that the actual physical act of her writing correlates to the end product she is trying to achieve.
She is most annoyed at the point where she transfers the writing she has done into a Word document, and the computer program tries to redo what she has written. This is her reaction to the computer program’s algorithmic ideas and implementation of the rewrite function: “I don’t need you to rewrite what I’ve just written, will you fuck off?!”
These collective sentiments from the silver screen’s finest artists convey far more than a mere rejection of technological advancements. They represent a defense of what each feels to be inviolable: the indispensable human quality that goes into the art of creative expression.
DiCaprio, Cameron, and the Defense of the Human Artist
If one considers the statements from DiCaprio regarding humanity, del Toro’s blunt refusal, the defense from Cameron regarding actors, and Thompson’s for the writer’s art, the one clear takeaway remains that art must have a human heart to give it purpose.
While the advancements in the technology of artificial intelligence press onward and escalate in complexity, the debate is sure to escalate accordingly.
For the present, the movers and shakers within the entertainment industry are making a stand, preferring to firmly establish the position that no matter the level of sophistication the tech is able to attain, it will never be able to create the essence of humanity, the ingredient that turns good work into great art.
