The Simpsons star Nancy Cartwright has reassured fans that she won’t be replaced by AI when she retires.
The actress has voiced Bart Simpson alongside various other roles on the animated comedy since its inception, and addressed the possibility of AI taking over the role when she eventually steps away.
“I think I would choose a successor [instead of AI], and I’ll tell you why — because AI has no heart and I think that’s a missing ingredient,” she told People.
“[AI] might sound pretty close to Nancy Cartwright, but I got passion. We’re spiritual beings, we can emote passion and uplift people and stuff. And I don’t know that a computer can do something like that.”
The impact of AI in the entertainment industry has been increasingly discussed in recent years as the technology continually advances.
Like Cartwright, last year director James Cameron suggested that generative AI would not replace human actors, telling Variety: “The creative culture is so strong across all these artists that I can look at a shot for review for the very first time and say ‘It’s done.’
“That is the craziest thing… So this idea of really encouraging them to think as storytellers is really paying off. And this is why the Gen AI stuff is never going to take the place of that. We need our artists. It’s artists in control of the process, right?”
The filmmaker, who previously said he was exploring ways of using AI to bring down costs – though remained wary of the future AI could bring – spoke in the wake of the debut of AI actress Tilly Norwood, who was showcased at the Zurich Film Festival last year.
This sparked a huge backlash from fans and actors, including Emily Blunt and Natasha Lyonne, while the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has also condemned it and urged talent agencies not to partake in supporting AI.
Last November, The Simpsons‘ parent company Disney confirmed that Disney+ subscribers will soon be able to make their own AI-generated content on the streamer.
CEO Bob Iger revealed that they were “in the midst of rolling out the biggest and the most significant changes – from a product perspective, from a technology perspective” since the streaming service’s launch in 2019.
“The other thing that we’re really excited about, that AI is going to give us the ability to do, is to provide users of Disney+ with a much more engaged experience, including the ability for them to create user-generated content and to consume user generated content – mostly short-form – from others,” he added.
Just recently, director Darren Aronofsky attracted backlash after debuting a new series from his AI film studio called On This Day… 1776, which uses Google DeepMind tech to re-create moments from the American Revolution.
One viewer said they “hopes this bombs spectacularly” while another said the show “looks like absolute dogshit”.
In other news, The Simpsons actor Hank Azaria recently went viral for his reaction to character Moe’s inclusion in Fortnite.