George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts | George Lucas

Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of filmmakers sensitive to the increasing use of AI tools in filmmaking.

Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s FootLucas, 82, said: “AI means making movies is much easier for us.”

Resistance to technology was “like sitting here and saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and buggy is really where it is. These cars break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them, and pretty soon they’re going to turn them into tanks and then they’re going to kill people. It’s terrible.'”

The adoption of such tools was inevitable, Lucas continued. “There’s nothing you can do about it. This is progress, this is the future.”

Lucas isn’t the only director of a Star Wars movie to speak out in favor of AI. British filmmaker Gareth Edwards, who produced Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and most recently Jurassic World Rebirth, said the productive AI is “an absolute genius at helping you.”

But there are high-profile detractors, including The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan, who recently said: “I’ve never seen a technology that’s been so successfully embraced by Wall Street and investors… that the public has so completely rejected. Young people, in particular, have coined this term ‘AI Crash’… There’s a kind of disdain for things related to AI.”

Meanwhile, John Lennon: The Last Interview documentary by Steven Soderbergh It contains AI-generated strings and expresses instability. “I don’t think this is the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now we might all be thinking: ‘This was a fun phase.'”

Lucas also discussed the industry’s thoughts on the use of audience testing and focus groups on his website. “I don’t like focus groups,” he said. “The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a filmmaker, I want to know why. But when studios hear that, they get the wrong message. They’re letting the audience really make the movie… Now it’s all about what the fans think. That’s not how you make the movie.”