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Spielberg open to AI for budgeting, planning tasks

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The director's films have yet to use AI technology

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'I don't want AI making creative decisions,' director says

By Dawn Chmielewski

LOS ANGELES, June 27 (Reuters) - When Steven Spielberg

directed the film "A.I. Artificial Intelligence," the technology

was the stuff of science fiction -- a device to tell a story

about the ethics of creating sentient machines.

Now, AI is a concrete reality in Hollywood - one where

Spielberg said he has drawn a line in the sand.

"I don't want AI making any creative decisions that I can't

make myself," said Spielberg, in an interview with Reuters. "And

I don't want to use AI as a non-human collaborator, in trying to

work out my creative thinking."

Spielberg spoke on Thursday after a ceremony dedicating the

Steven Spielberg Theater on the Universal Studios lot. The event

acknowledged the director's decades-long relationship with the

studio, which released such films as "Jaws," "Jurassic Park,"

"Schindler's List" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial."

The acclaimed director joked that his career at Universal

began in 1967, when he took a tour of the lot as a high school

student. He said he hid in the bathroom during a break, and

waited for the tour to move on without him, "then I had the

entire lot to myself that day."

"Our hope and dream is that it's not just the place that is

founded on his extraordinary legacy," said Donna Langley,

chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios. "But it is the

place of future hopes and dreams of filmmakers and storytellers

who are going to take this company into the next 100 years and

the 100 years after that, people who come with a hope and a

dream, people who have been inspired by Steven."

Spielberg's 2001 modest box office hit "A.I. Artificial

Intelligence" was a meditation on love, loss and what it means

to be human through the eyes of a discarded humanoid robot. In

the Pinocchio-like journey set in a futuristic dystopia, David,

the android boy, yearns to be human, searching for love, in a

world of machines and artificial intelligence.

The film hit screens when AI was still in its nascent stages and

predated the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT by 21 years.

SPIELBERG AGAINST AI MAKING CREATIVE DECISIONS

"It wasn't about artificial intelligence as much as it was

about sentient existence, and can you love a sentient entity?

Can a mother love a robot child?" said Spielberg. "It was not

really where AI is taking us today. Eventually, there will be a

convergence between AI and robotics."

Spielberg said AI can be a great tool "if used responsibly

and morally" to help find a cure for cancer and other diseases.

"I just draw a line -- and it's not a line of cement, it's

just a little bit of line in the sand -- which gives me some

wiggle room to say (that) I have the option to revise this

thinking in the future," he said. "But right now, I don't want

AI making any creative decisions."

He said he has seen, first-hand, how technology can replace

human talent while working on the 1993 film, "Jurassic Park."

Spielberg initially planned to use renowned stop-motion clay

animation artist Phil Tippett to create the dinosaurs roaming

the island theme park. Visual effects artist Dennis Muren

proposed an alternative method, using Industrial Light & Magic's

computer-generated imagery to create realistic dinosaurs. The

director is an executive producer in "Jurassic World: Rebirth"

which reaches theaters on July 2.

"That kind of made certain careers somewhat extinct," said

Spielberg. "So, I'm very sensitive to things that AI may do to

take work away from people."

Spielberg said he has yet to use AI on any of his films so

far, though he is open to possible applications of it

behind-the-scenes, in functions like budgeting or planning.

"I don't want to use it in front of the camera right now,"

Spielberg said. "Not quite yet."