‘Battlestar Galactica' star says show's AI warnings more timely as sci-fi fantasies come to life
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — "Battlestar Galactica" star Tricia Helfer feels the show was a prescient warning about artificial intelligence when it debuted more than 20 years ago.
"We did warn against AI while we were shooting it," Helfer told Fox News Digital at the Beverly Hills Film Festival this week.
She continued, "It was 20 years ago, and I've recently re-watched it and went, 'Oh my gosh, it's even more relevant now.' So I think we just really need to be careful. It's a slippery slope between using it to our advantage and having it maybe be able to control us a little bit."
"I think we're a little bit far off from the humanoid Cylons yet and humanoid robots, but I don't know, they're coming," Helfer added.
"Battlestar Galactica" debuted on the SyFy channel in 2004, reimagined from the 1978 original series, and follows the battle between humans and Cylons, the humanoid sentient robots humans created that turned on them and launched a nuclear attack that nearly wiped out the entirety of humanity.
Helfer played a Cylon in the series, named Number Six, who played a key role in the story as both antagonist and ally.
Regarding AI, the Canadian-born actress said, "It's not going away, so I think it's something that we're going to have to embrace. But I think one of the things 'Battlestar Galactica' did was warn about it. And that's, I think, something that we need to make sure [is] that we have is regulations and an understanding of how quickly and how overwhelming this technology could become."
WATCH: 'Battlestar Galactica' star says show's AI warnings more relevant than ever
A "Battlestar Galactica" reboot was in the works at Peacock with Sam Esmail, the showrunner behind "Mr. Robot," but it has since been halted and shopped elsewhere, per Variety.
In 2023, Esmail spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how the new version's view of AI would be evolving from the original.
"The world is changing way too fast for us. I mean, when we started working on it, I obviously was aware of AI, but now, four or five years later, it's in the public consciousness and now that's so influential in how we're going to tell the story," Esmail told the outlet. "The allegory piece is something that is crystallized in a different way, too. The focus is the same, which is the fear of tech and how it might take over, but this idea of just 'the robots are going to be our overlords' is a very facile and overly simplistic way of looking at it. Now that the audience is more sophisticated about the consequences, I think we have to match that with 'Battlestar.'"
"It's a slippery slope between using it to our advantage and having it maybe be able to control us a little bit."
While Helfer believes humanoid robots are still in the somewhat distant future, there are some attempts to create them in the present day.
Suzanne Somers' widower, Alan Hamel, recently worked with an AI company called Hollo to create a "twin" of his late wife.
"I am working with Hollo, an AI company to create Suzanne AI. It's very exciting to think about being able to interact with Suzanne's twin," Hamel told Fox News Digital in a statement last month.
The robot replica of Somers trained on her film and TV appearances, as well as her books, to bring back the "essence" of the "Three's Company" star, according to Hollo.AI CEO Rex Wong.
When it came to the Suzanne AI, Wong said, "The robot, which we did in collaboration with Realbotix, is the first of many AI versions of Suzanne, but AI Suzanne can also be accessible via call, chat and text. AI Suzanne highlights how we can extend a person's legacy and bring it to the next generation, and one of the services we will be rolling out will be the ability to preserve one's legacy for future generations or bring back a loved one."
Somers died in 2023 after a long battle with breast cancer.
Hamel told the New York Post that the idea for the Somers AI-powered bot "absolutely did come from her" and that "She may have known her life was going to be shortened [after a lifelong battle with cancer]."
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