By AI Chatter News Staff
In a bold defense of emerging technology, Star Wars creator George Lucas has characterized the film industry’s resistance to artificial intelligence as a futile attempt to stop the inevitable march of progress. During a recent interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, the 82-year-old filmmaker compared AI skeptics to Luddites clinging to a bygone era.
“That’s Progress”
Lucas argued that artificial intelligence is the “future” of filmmaking, emphasizing that the technology simply makes it “much easier for us to make movies.” He dismissed current anxieties about the tech by drawing a historical parallel to the transition from animal-powered transport to the automobile.
“Resistance to the technology,” Lucas said, “is 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… and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.'” Despite these fears, Lucas maintains that adoption is unavoidable, stating, “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress.”
A House Divided: The Hollywood AI Debate
Lucas is not alone in his digital optimism. British filmmaker Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) recently called generative AI a “genius” for its ability to assist in the creative process. Even Steven Soderbergh has experimented with the tech, incorporating AI-generated sequences into his documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview, though he remains ambivalent about whether the trend is a permanent shift or just a “fun phase.”
However, the industry remains sharply divided. Christopher Nolan, director of the acclaimed epic The Odyssey, stands as a high-profile holdout. Nolan pointed out a massive disconnect between investors and the general public, noting that while Wall Street has embraced AI, audiences—particularly young people—have “thoroughly rejected” it, often deriding the output as “AI slop.”
The Battle for Creative Control
Lucas’s support for AI appears linked to his long-standing disdain for studio-mandated audience testing. He criticized the industry’s reliance on focus groups, arguing that studios often let “the audience actually make the movie” by overreacting to fan feedback.
To Lucas, the shift toward AI tools represents another evolution in the tools available to the filmmaker, independent of the “wrong messages” often sent by studio executives and fan-driven demands. As the debate rages on, Lucas’s stance is clear: AI is a tool of “progress” that will define the next era of cinema, regardless of those still holding onto their “horses and carts.”