Latest news with #Terminator
Business Insider
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
David Ellison says AI shouldn't scare Hollywood
As David Ellison takes over the newly formed Paramount Skydance, he has a clear message for Hollywood grappling with AI's encroachment: don't fear it. "We're not going to be afraid of tech, we're going to embrace it," Ellison said at a press event Thursday, where he fielded questions on his plans for the newly formed company. "I don't think AI is a replacement for creativity." Hollywood has a split personality when it comes to AI. Some like Lionsgate and AMC have publicly acknowledged recent deals with prominent AI company Runway, and Netflix has shared how it's used AI in the content creation process. Others, like Disney, have demurred about their work in the space, sensitive to the need to protect their famous IP and relations with talent who worry about the tech being used to steal their likeness and other risks. Disney and NBCUniversal are suing the AI company Midjourney, alleging copyright infringement. Ellison, whose father, Oracle's Larry Ellison, helped bankroll the merger, has made tech a big part of his pitch to combine his Skydance with the larger Paramount. He laid out a number of ways he plans to do that, starting with consolidation on the streaming side. The company has three streamers supported by three tech stacks, and the plan is to collapse those into one stack "really quickly." He also plans to use AI to improve the ability for people to find shows they like on the streamers and impact how content is created. Ellison stressed that his embrace of tech shouldn't worry creatives, though. He compared the use of AI to Pixar popularizing 3D computer animation over hand-drawn animation in the 1990s. "There was an uproar over the notion that technology was going to disrupt the animators," he said. "And Pixar would always say, 'We're just giving the animators their own pencil to create things you could never create before.' And I think we're in another one of those times we're going to see that level of shift." As far as applying AI, he said it could help make big-budget films. He gave the example of a blockbuster like the original "Terminator" and how it would be a lot more expensive to make today. That "basically means that young artists and filmmakers actually can't go out there and tell bold, original stories," he said. Ellison also imagined using advanced AI models to let people engage with characters directly: "That's a lot closer, I think, than people realize it is." But while people have given one-off examples of how AI can make individual projects cheaper, no one really knows how much it can move the needle for Hollywood. Paramount, like much of the rest of the industry, has to deal with a declining linear TV business, debt, and a sub-scale, still not globally profitable streaming business. A recent study commissioned by the Concept Art Association and the Animation Guild, meanwhile, predicted that AI would impact more than 200,000 Hollywood jobs over the next three years. Along with tech, Ellison said he plans to grow the streaming business by making more movies and shows. The company is open to joint ventures with other streamers. Paramount Skydance execs also said linear TV was still a focus. They singled out Nickelodeon as one channel that's an important way to keep families and kids, and would be a big priority for investment.
Geek Tyrant
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Tyrant
James Cameron Warns That a Real-Life Terminator-Style AI Apocalypse Could Be Closer Than We Think — GeekTyrant
Filmmaker James Cameron might be harnessing artificial intelligence to revolutionize visual effects, but he's also raising alarms about where this tech could take us if paired with weapons. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the Avatar and Titanic director shares his growing concern that the dark future he imagined in The Terminator isn't just sci-fi anymore. 'I do think there's still a danger of a Terminator' -style apocalypse where you put AI together with weapons systems, even up to the level of nuclear weapon systems, nuclear defense counterstrike, all that stuff,' Cameron said. 'Because the theater of operations is so rapid, the decision windows are so fast, it would take a super-intelligence to be able to process it, and maybe we'll be smart and keep a human in the loop. 'But humans are fallible, and there have been a lot of mistakes made that have put us right on the brink of international incidents that could have led to nuclear war. So I don't know.' Cameron sees us teetering on the edge of something big, saying: 'I feel like we're at this cusp in human development where you've got the three existential threats: climate and our overall degradation of the natural world, nuclear weapons, and super-intelligence,' he added. 'They're all sort of manifesting and peaking at the same time. Maybe the super-intelligence is the answer. I don't know. I'm not predicting that, but it might be.' The Terminator launched back in 1984 and imagined a grim future where an AI defense system called Skynet turns on humanity after becoming self-aware. With nuclear weapons and automated armies, it nearly wipes us out. It was sci-fi then, but Cameron believes we're edging closer to that reality. Despite his warnings, Cameron isn't writing off AI entirely. In fact, he's actively exploring how it can improve filmmaking. He joined the board of directors at Stability AI in 2024 and sees a future where AI dramatically speeds up production and cuts VFX costs without slashing jobs. 'If we want to continue to see the kinds of movies that I've always loved and that I like to make and that I will go to see — Dune, Dune: Part Two , or one of my films or big effects-heavy, CG-heavy films — we've got to figure out how to cut the cost in half,' he previosly explained. 'Now that's not about laying off half the staff and at the effects company. That's about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster, and artists get to move on and do other cool things and then other cool things, right? That's my sort of vision for that.' Still, when it comes to storytelling, Cameron isn't convinced AI can ever truly replace human creativity. In a previous interview, he shot down the idea of AI-written screenplays. 'I just don't personally believe that a disembodied mind that's just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said — about the life that they've had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality — and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it… 'I don't believe that's ever going to have something that's going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that. I don't know anyone that's even thinking about having AI write a screenplay.' So while Cameron is open to using AI as a creative tool, he's clearly drawing a line between innovation and annihilation. The tech might help make blockbusters more affordable, but if it finds its way into weapon systems, we could be headed straight into Terminator territory. Check out Rolling Stone to read Cameron's full interview and hear more of his thoughts on AI, filmmaking, and our uncertain future.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Terminator' Director Shares Bleak Outlook on 'Apocalyptic' Future of A.I.
'Terminator' Director Shares Bleak Outlook on 'Apocalyptic' Future of A.I. originally appeared on Parade. As artificial intelligence grows more and more sophisticated, it's only natural for the average person to worry about how A.I. will impact their lives in the immediate future ahead. While some view the tool as a viable way to make everyday life easier, others have expressed their worries about A.I.'s remarkable intelligence, with some even worrying it has the potential to risk humanity's very survival. Though these fears might seem like something straight out of Terminator, James Cameron himself has revealed his own fearful reaction to A.I.'s place in contemporary society. Above all else, the Terminator and Avatar creator worried about, without proper handling and restraint, A.I. could feasibly trigger a "Terminator-style" apocalypse beyond our wildest imagination. 'I do think there's still a danger of a Terminator-style apocalypse where you put AI together with weapons systems, even up to the level of nuclear weapon systems, nuclear defense counterstrike, all that stuff,' Cameron said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine. 'Because the theater of operations is so rapid, the decision windows are so fast, it would take a super-intelligence to be able to process it, and maybe we'll be smart and keep a human in the loop," the Titanic director continued. "But humans are fallible, and there have been a lot of mistakes made that have put us right on the brink of international incidents that could have led to nuclear war. So I don't know.' Going one step further, Cameron explained his fears over A.I. come from the rapid developments in both technology and environmental change, each of which could combine to form a serious threat to humanity's existence. 'I feel like we're at this cusp in human development where you've got the three existential threats: climate and our overall degradation of the natural world, nuclear weapons and super-intelligence,' the 70-year-old filmmaker said. 'They're all sort of manifesting and peaking at the same time. Maybe the super-intelligence is the answer. I don't know. I'm not predicting that, but it might be.' 'Terminator' Director Shares Bleak Outlook on 'Apocalyptic' Future of A.I. first appeared on Parade on Aug 7, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 7, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
How Hiroshima nuclear bomb inspired movie franchise
It was a scene so chillingly accurate that nuclear experts praised director James Cameron for 'getting it right'. The imagined sequence in Terminator 2: Judgement Day showed leading character Sarah Connor getting obliterated by an atomic bomb that had hit Los Angeles . Now, Cameron is planning an 'intense' film about the 1945 nuclear attack on the Japanese city of Hiroshima that killed around 130,000 people 80 years ago, on August 6, 1945. The production will be an adaptation of new book Ghosts of Hiroshima, which draws on 200 interviews with survivors of the blast, as well as those who escaped death in the subsequent attack on Nagasaki. Speaking this week, Cameron told how the Terminator films - the first was released 1984 - were directly inspired by his experience of seeing a documentary about the Hiroshima blast when he was at college. 'I remember a trolley, a burnt-out trolley, its floor filled with a pile of skulls. That image became a primal image in The Terminator,' he said in the Telegraph . The director added: 'And then, of course, we played it all out in Terminator 2, actually showing the effects of the nuclear weapons.' The first Terminator depicts Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor attempting to escape the clutches of the cyborg killer robot portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Terminator has been sent back from 2029, when civilization has been destroyed by a nuclear holocaust sparked by artificial intelligence system Skynet. He added: 'When he was making that film, notwithstanding whatever the studio wanted from it, he said, I'm going to make it as intense as I can make it...' The director wants to make the film as 'real for you as I can', he told DiscussingFilm . And he added that he is 'afraid' of his upcoming production, perhaps because it is set to do something that Hollywood has so far shied away from: actually depicting the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even Christopher Nolan's 2023 film Oppenheimer, which told the story of how the atom bomb was developed, avoided showing the moment the technology was used on Japan in August 1945. The United States made the decision to drop nuclear weapons in an attempt to end the Second World War. Although Adolf Hitler had by then taken his own life and Nazi Germany had surrendered, Japan continued to fight on. In Hiroshima, the blast - at 8.15am on August 6, 1945 - obliterated everything within the surrounding square mile, killing around 80,000 people in the blink of an eye. Tens of thousands more died from their devastating injuries in the 48 hours that followed. A total of five square miles of the city were consumed by fire storms, and the blast obliterated 90 per cent of Hiroshima's structures. The police, fire and ambulance services were all virtually wiped out, with survivors left to fend for themselves before help arrived from further afield. The follow-up attack on Nagasaki came on August 9, after Japan refused to surrender despite the carnage in Hiroshima. The device - Fat Man - was carried by the B-29 bomber named Bockscar. It claimed at least 50,000 more lives and wiped out a third of the city. Japan finally agreed to the Allies' terms of surrender on August 14.
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
James Cameron warns of ‘Terminator-style apocalypse' if AI weaponised
The director James Cameron has warned that the use of artificial intelligence in a global arms race could lead to the kind of dystopia fictionalised in his Terminator franchise. Speaking to Rolling Stone to promote the publication of Ghosts of Hiroshima, an account of the first atomic bombing by bestselling author Charles Pellegrino which Cameron intends to adapt for the big screen, the film-maker behind three of the four highest-grossing films of all time (Titanic and the first two Avatar films), said that although he relies on AI professionally, he remains concerned about what might happen if it was leveraged with nihilistic intent. 'I do think there's still a danger of a Terminator-style apocalypse where you put AI together with weapons systems, even up to the level of nuclear weapon systems, nuclear defence counterstrike, all that stuff,' Cameron said. 'Because the theatre of operations is so rapid, the decision windows are so fast, it would take a super-intelligence to be able to process it, and maybe we'll be smart and keep a human in the loop. 'But humans are fallible, and there have been a lot of mistakes made that have put us right on the brink of international incidents that could have led to nuclear war. So I don't know.' He added: 'I feel like we're at this cusp in human development where you've got the three existential threats: climate and our overall degradation of the natural world, nuclear weapons, and super-intelligence. They're all sort of manifesting and peaking at the same time. Maybe the super-intelligence is the answer.' Cameron's original 1984 Terminator film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is set in a world in which humanity is ruled by an artificially intelligent defence network called Skynet. Cameron's films, Avatar in particular, are actively engaged with AI in their execution, and the director has been positive about how the technology could help reduce production costs. Last September, he joined the board of directors of Stability AI and earlier this year said the future of blockbuster film-making hinges on being able to 'cut the cost of [VFX] in half'. He clarified that he hoped such cost-cutting would come not from human layoffs but speed acceleration. However, Cameron has also expressed scepticism about the capacity of AI to replace screenwriters. In 2023, he said: 'I just don't personally believe that a disembodied mind that's just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said – about the life that they've had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality – and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it … I don't believe that's ever going to have something that's going to move an audience. You have to be human to write that.'
