James Woods Issues Terrifying Warning About AI

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The two-time Oscar-nominated Hollywood star James Woods is speaking out this week to issue a terrifying warning about artificial intelligence (AI).

Woods Issues AI Warning

Woods, 78, believes that AI will bring about the end of “human actors” in Hollywood.

“AI is the end of human actors. I’m adamant about this,” Woods told Fox News. “People say, ‘You’re overreacting’… when the silent [movies] went to talkies. People said, ‘Oh it’s a fad.’ When television came in, ‘It won’t replace movies.'”

Woods went on to claim that Hollywood movie studios will soon start cutting costs by casting AI actors instead of actual human beings.

“It’s not going to work [right now] because we have movie stars we like,” Woods argued. “We love brilliant actors like Brad Pitt, we love Meryl Streep, all these great actors because we grew up with them, but when the next generation grows up with a computer-generated model, they will be as realistic as people.”

Woods then cited Moore’s Law, which states that computing power tends to double roughly every 18 months. He believes that this shows that the reality of AI actors replacing human beings is approaching incredibly rapidly.

“When Steven Spielberg did the first ‘Jurassic Park,’ people said, ‘This is amazing… How can he have done it?’ He goes, ‘In five years, 14-year-old kids will be doing this on their Macintosh.’ And he was right,” Woods concluded. “Maybe it was a couple years more or a couple of years less, but it’s astonishing how quickly it’s changing.”

Watch Woods talk more about this in the video below.

Kevin O’Leary Weighs In

This comes two months after the Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary noted that an Oscar-contending movie he’s in could have saved millions of dollars by using AI-generated background actors.

“There’s a movie I’m in that’s coming out on Christmas called Marty Supreme,” O’Leary told The Hill in October. “We worked on it for eight months. Almost every scene had as many as 150 extras.”

“Those people had to stay awake for 18 hours, be completely dressed in the background — not necessarily in the movie, except they’re necessary to be there moving around,” he added. “And yet, it costs millions of dollars to do that.”

O’Leary proceeded to give a specific example of this.

“When we shot in a French bistro, all of the supporting actors behind, or at least the extras, were speaking French in a dim — you couldn’t tell, but you know it wasn’t English,” he recalled. “Why couldn’t you simply put AI agents in their place? Because they’re not the main actors, they’re only in the story visually.”

According to O’Leary, this move would “save millions of dollars” and “more movies could be made.”

“That same director, instead of spending $90 million or whatever he spent, could have spent $35 million and made two movies,” he stated. “I’d argue that for the sake of the art, you should allow it in certain cases. An extra is a really good-use case, because you can’t tell the difference. You just put a hundred Norwood Tillies in there, and you’re good.”

It continues to be astounding just how rapidly AI has become such a force in all of our lives. Only time will tell how AI impacts Hollywood in the future!