Ashton Kutcher mocked for peddling “soulless” AI movies
TCL/Berggruen InstituteAshton Kutcher has lauded OpenAI’s Sora, believing artificial intelligence could pave the way for personalized movies and drive competition — and people aren’t happy.
The use of AI in movies and television has been especially contentious over the past year; Late Night with the Devil sparked backlash after it used AI-generated artwork, while Secret Invasion angered fans with its AI-powered opening credits sequence.
The arguments for either side are simple but fiercely argued: some believe it democratizes the creative process, and others think it strips the humanity from art (and anything else requiring a human hand).
Kutcher is an active proponent of AI, with his venture capitalist firm launching a $243 million fund in 2023 to invest in artificial intelligence start-ups.
The actor discussed the potential for AI during an event with Eric Schmidt at a Berggruen Salon in Los Angeles, revealing he’s been “playing around” with a beta version of OpenAI’s Sora program.
“It’s pretty amazing… you can create good 10, 15-second videos that look very real. It still makes mistakes, it still doesn’t quite understand physics. If you look at the generation of this that existed one year ago… it’s leaps and bounds,” he said, even claiming some of the footage could be used in a movie or TV show now.
“Why would you go out and shoot an establishing shot of a house in a television show when you could just create the establishing shot for $100?” he added, before outlining how AI prompts would circumvent the need to hire stunt performers and CGI artists.
“You’ll be able to render a whole movie. You’ll come up with an idea for a movie, then it’ll write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator, and then it’ll generate the movie… why are you going to watch my movie when you can watch your own movie?”
A clip from the talk was shared on X/Twitter, leading to hundreds of replies mocking Kutcher and criticizing his promotion of AI. “This sounds like a complete nightmare. Absolutely removing all humanity from art and filmmaking,” one user wrote.
“Ashton Kutcher is a f**king moron,” another posted. “The bloke played Steve Jobs once in a film absolutely no one saw and now thinks he is some fount of technological knowledge,” a third wrote. “The ‘contentification’ of human creative output is sending us down a one-way tunnel to self-annihilation,” a fourth tweeted.
“F**king dipshit, now you can’t experience the fun it is to create something that’s yours. Just a soulless piece of ‘content,'” a fifth wrote. “Ashton Kutcher seems pretty excited about the prospect of putting countless people out of work by stealing and devaluing their art, but the part I can’t get over is how impressed he is that someone spent a billion dollars to invent an inferior version of stock footage,” a sixth added.
This also comes after the trailer for the first full-length AI movie was released online… which wasn’t well-received. Instead, check out our list of new movies streaming in June.