Ashton Kutcher says AI will make movies better. Hollywood disagrees.

Actor and entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher is in hot water again after suggesting that AI could one day be used to make Hollywood-quality films without a studio, cast or crew.

Kutcher’s comments came during an onstage conversation with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the Berggruen Institute, a think tank in Los Angeles, California, last week. Video excerpts from the exchange have since been made private and no longer appear on YouTube.

The co-founder of Schmidt Futures asked Kutcher what the future of Hollywood looks like in the AI ​​era. In response, Kutcher questioned why filmmakers struggle to film on location when tools like Sora AI are available.

“Why would you film an establishing shot of a house from a TV show when you can do an establishing shot for $100? It costs thousands of dollars to go out and film,” Kutcher said. Diversity. “For the action scene where I jump off this building, I don’t have to ask a stuntman to do it, I just go ahead and do it.”

Last February, OpenAI unveiled the Sora AI model, which creates one-minute high-quality videos using text-based instructions. Sora is currently in an invite-only closed beta, but Kutcher said early access is available.

Kutcher went further and suggested that content creators could use AI models to create their own movies using content they find online. He omitted any acknowledgment of the obvious copyright and intellectual property rights implications of his proposal.

Kutcher added, “If you enter the scene you want to see, the scene you want to see, or the trailer you want to see, it will create it,” adding, “This will lead to the spread of new content.”

Kutcher said the new wave of AI-based content will change the paradigm of how movies are made and their success measured.

“Why would you watch my movie when you can watch your own?” he said

Colleagues in the entertainment industry fiercely disagreed on social media.

“Even AI can’t make a movie where Ashton Kutcher is a good actor,” comedian and actor Gianmarco Soresi wrote on Twitter.

Many critics have pointed out that Kutcher is a co-founder of an investment fund focused on AI and that his comments were in support of a disruptive technology, not an industry being destroyed.

“It should have been revealed that Ashton Kutcher has a venture capital firm that is currently investing in AI,” tweeted Alice Herring, a member of The Animation Guild in Hollywood. “He is not speaking as a filmmaker (since he has never been a director, cinematographer, writer or editor). He speaks as an investment salesman.”

Kutcher responded to the backlash late Thursday by tweeting, “I don’t think AI will replace the film industry or the creative arts.”

“It’s an incredible tool that we must learn to work with to become more prolific and efficient as (artists),” he wrote. “Acting as if it doesn’t exist would be disastrous.”

Kutcher recently sparked controversy over another tech project he launched with his wife and fellow actress Mila Kunis.

“If you’re wondering if Ashton Kutcher is also into metaverse, cryptocurrency, and NFTs… That’s right. The answer is yes,” Lincoln Michel, author of ‘The Body Scout,’ wrote, referring to Kutcher and his wife Mila Kunis’ Stoner Cats NFT project.

Stoner Cats remains in limbo after production was halted last September following a notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it violated federal securities laws when it sold NFT passes to watch the show. Federal regulators fined the Stoner Cats project $1 million.

In 2023, union members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) took the picket line after negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. AMPTP) failed due to numerous issues, including the use of generative AI in film and television production.

The strike lasted more than six months before contract negotiations were concluded in September. “Across contracts worth more than $1 billion, we achieved an extraordinary range of deals, including ‘groundbreaking’ minimum compensation increases and unprecedented consent and compensation provisions that will protect our members from AI threats.” SAG-AFTRA wrote On Twitter.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.