‘Avatar’ director James Cameron says generative AI is ‘horrifying’

James Cameron’s films are often at the cutting edge of visual effects technology, especially the “Avatar” films, bringing their heroic blue Na’vi characters to life through performance capture.

But that doesn’t make Cameron a fan of generative AI.

In a CBS Sunday Morning interview tied to the upcoming release of “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the director acknowledged that performance capture (where an actor’s performance is recorded as a template for digital artists) may sound similar to genAI. But in reality he said it was “the opposite.”

“For years there was this feeling that, ‘Oh, they’re doing something weird with computers, and they’re replacing actors,’” Cameron said. “Once you really dig in and see what we’re doing, it’s really a celebration of the actor-director moment.”

The CBS segment features members of the “Avatar” cast performing their underwater scenes in a 500,000-gallon water tank.

“Go to the other end of the spectrum and you have generative AI, where they can make up a character, they can make up an actor, they can make up a whole new performance with a text prompt,” Cameron added. “No, that’s horrible… That’s exactly what we don’t do.”