Jenna Ortega has addressed the use of AI in filmmaking, saying it’s “very easy to be terrified”.
The Wednesday actress was asked about the rise of AI in cinema while speaking at a press conference at the Marrakech Film Festival yesterday (November 29). Ortega responded by looking back at the history of humanity, saying: “We just always take things too far, and I think it’s very easy to be terrified, I know I am, of deep uncertainty.”
She added that, with AI, “it kind of feels like we’ve opened Pandora’s box in a way.”
However, she went on to say that she’s hopeful that AI could help assist art. “In these difficult and confusing times, oftentimes it pushes the artist to speak out more, to do more, for there to be this new awakening and passion and protection, and I want to assume and hope that that’s the case,” she said.
“But there’s certain things that AI just isn’t able to replicate. There’s beauty in difficulty and there’s beauty in mistakes, and a computer can’t do that. A computer has no soul.”
Ortega added that she hopes AI “comes to a point where it becomes sort of mental junk food and we feel sick and we don’t know why. I think, as terrible as it is to say, sometimes audiences need to be deprived of something in order to appreciate something again.”
AI has been a hot topic in the entertainment industry lately. One recent AI controversy erupted in September when the Dutch actor and comedian Eline Van der Velden caused controversy when she debuted an AI actor named Tilly Norwood, which some speculated could become the first AI-generated character to be signed by a talent agency.
The move prompted criticism from many actors at the time, including Emily Blunt and Natasha Lyonne, and Morgan Freeman has now added his outrage to the phenomenon.
“Nobody likes her because she’s not real and that takes the part of a real person, so it’s not going to work out very well in the movies or in television,” he said. “The union’s job is to keep actors going, so there’s going to be that conflict.”
James Cameron, who has said he is exploring ways in which AI technology could help bring costs down in the film industry, also said he remains wary of the possible Terminator-like future it could bring about, and that he believes AI cannot replace the need for human artists and actors.
In music, the AI-generated Xania Monet recently became the first known AI “artist” to gain enough radio airplay in the US to debut on a Billboard chart, and has reportedly signed a multimillion-dollar record deal with Hallwood Media.
A new study also found that 97 per cent of people “can’t tell the difference” between real and AI music.