A hot potato: Not everyone in the movie industry is against generative AI. Star Wars creator George Lucas is so pro-AI that he believes those who reject the technology are comparable to people who still believe the horse and buggy are a better option than cars.
Lucas expressed his opinion of AI in an interview with A Rabbit's Foot to promote the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.
"Artificial intelligence means it's much easier for us to make movies," Lucas said. "It's very much like sitting here saying, 'Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it's at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there's all kinds of problems with them, and pretty soon they'll be making them into tanks, and then they'll be killing people. It's terrible.' There's nothing you can do about it. That's progress. It's the future."
Lucas acknowledged that AI carries risks, including fake content being presented as genuine, but argued that the technology could also help identify such material and trace where it originated.
"If you want AI that tells you when something is fake and where it came from, AI can do that," Lucas said. "Humans can't. We're not that smart. The whole idea is you're a human being, you're responsible for what you say and what you do, and if you're doing something that's illegal, you should be punished for that. Whatever you do, you should be recognized. It's just like real life."
Beginning with the first film's arrival in 1999, Lucas took plenty of criticism for the extensive use of CGI throughout the Star Wars prequels. Lucasfilm continued that tradition last year when its effects division, Industrial Light & Magic, revealed "a new era of technology": a two-minute AI-generated video of animals that had been blended into ungodly hybrids, like a crocoturtle.
Another Star Wars director, Gareth Edwards, who was behind the camera for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Jurassic World Rebirth, called generative AI "a f**king genius at helping you."
The majority of Hollywood doesn't share these pro-AI opinions, of course. Generative AI was a central issue in the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Performers feared studios could scan their bodies, clone their voices, and reuse digital replicas without meaningful consent or additional pay, potentially replacing future acting work. The final contract didn't ban AI but introduced consent, notification, and compensation requirements for digital replicas.
Lucas' comments come soon after Christopher Nolan spoke out against generative AI and its growing influence. He said he's particularly impressed by Gen Z's reaction to the technology. Nolan said younger people are increasingly rejecting generative AI, chatbots, and LLMs despite the unprecedented, industry-altering financial speculation surrounding what has been promoted as a supposedly "foundational" technological breakthrough.
Lucas has spent decades embracing technologies that changed how movies are made, so his enthusiasm is hardly surprising. Nolan, on the other hand, remains one of the industry's most prominent champions of practical effects, film stock, and shooting on real locations. He's definitely old-school – he doesn't even own a smartphone.
The debate isn't just about whether AI can make production faster or cheaper. Actors, writers, visual-effects artists, and other creatives fear that their work could be used to train models, their jobs could be automated, and their likenesses could be reproduced without permission. Lucas appears to view these concerns as manageable consequences of inevitable progress, but many of his peers don't feel the same way.
George Lucas says rejecting AI is like choosing the horse and buggy over cars
