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Oscar winning director Christopher Nolan he believes that the films he makes – big budget films shot mostly on location – can survive the spread of artificial intelligence, a technology he says many people “despise”.
Director Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight are encouraging his latest blockbusteradaptation of the Greek epic The Odyssey, which will be released in theaters this week.
“The interesting thing about AI is that I have never seen a technology that has been so well followed by Wall Street and investors and technology companies that people have rejected so much,” he told AFP in Paris.
“It’s a strange thing. Especially young people are the ones who coined the term ‘AI slop’,” he added. “There’s an aversion to AI stuff.”
AI has been introduced into business processes and online research services, and chatbots such as ChatGPT have been widely adopted, but the technology faces a major setback in industries such as music, video and art.
“AI slop” refers to the flood of AI-generated text, videos and audio that has been flooding in recent years.
Nolan, who also uses special effects in The Odysseyhe added that he hoped AI would lead to useful “recording tools”.
“But I think that the idea that it’s going to replace all people and human talent, to me is absurd,” said the British-American official.
On the release of his previous film Oppenheimer, Nolan told the Guardian in 2023 that there was a “significant similarity” between the calls of prominent nuclear scientists and AI experts who wanted the technology to be established, such as Dr Geoffrey Hinton, the British “godfather of AI”, who. leave Google talking openly about the “present threat” posed by advanced AI.
“I think (AI) is going to be a powerful tool in the future. What I’ve tried to put into the conversation, and continue to talk about, is the idea of responsibility and the responsibility of employers. One thing we can’t do is allow managers, employers and developers to use AI to eliminate responsibility for their actions,” Nolan said at the time.
“(AI) leaves me with a lot of nagging questions. And often those are the fuel for what I do,” he added.
AI companies have demonstrated the technology’s potential to transform actors, writers and camera operators – claims that have spread fear in the film industry, although there is also considerable skepticism.
It was one of the problems that led to the 2023 Hollywood disaster that shut down production and cost studios billions of dollars.
The Odyssey is an ancient Greek poem that is considered the cornerstone of Western literature. It recounts the heroic Odysseus’ 10-year quest to return home after the Trojan War and includes familiar motifs from ancient Greek mythology, including the one-eyed Cyclops and the Sirens.
The Odyssey of Nolan has a budget of 250 million dollars, which allowed the director to go to the place around the Mediterranean Sea with a star cast that includes Matt Damon in the lead as Odysseus, with the help of Zendaya, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Anne Hathaway.
Nolan was attacked by Elon Musk and other figures for casting black Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, a fictional character who is considered the most beautiful woman in the world. Nyong’o himself denied the comment, to say: “Our players represent the world. I don’t waste my time thinking about defense. The opposition will be there whether I play or not.”
Specially interview with the UK Telegraph Over the weekend, Nolan said criticism “comes with the stage”, saying: “The discussions that happen before people see the film – it’s always useless, because nobody knows the film.”
“Remember, I spent 10 years of my life doing Batman,” he said. “When I started (Batman) Begins, writers and artists had been working on this character for almost 65 years, and there were many opinions about what he represented.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this story.
