
Justine Bateman makes case against AI use in Hollywood
The entry of AI has sounded alarm bells in Hollywood, and Justin Bateman is at the forefront of calling attention to what she called the replacing of human work with machine codes.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Family Ties actress was asked about the “idea that AI is a tool — that it can help filmmakers who don’t otherwise have the budget to execute all the shots in their movie? Do you put any stock in that?”
In response, she said, “I don’t believe it. Because if that’s true, hundreds of films would have been impossible to get made before now. Humans always figured it out.”
She continued, “That great shot at the beginning of Sunset Boulevard where you’re looking up from the bottom of the pool past the body to the photographers. That’s such an imaginative shot. They used a mirror to get it.”
“If they had AI, they would have resorted to that, and we would have been robbed of one of the great shots in cinema. Constraints are what make great art,” the actress added.
But the interviewer doubled down on his questioning, asking, “But asking directors to voluntarily impose constraints is a big lift, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I’m not asking anybody not to use it. I just feel they’re cheating themselves if they use it instead of finding out what they can actually do; I just would never use it because I’d be handicapping myself creatively,” the 59-year-old added.
“Using AI for a shot is a regurgitation of the past. It’s a vomit of everything that’s been ingested. And it’s theft. Come on. They say it’s a tool. What kind of tool needs to ingest 100 years of film and series or it can’t function? That’s not a tool,” Justine concluded.