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

James Cameron’s movies are often at the cutting edge of visual effects technology — especially the “Avatar” films, with their heroic blue Na’vi characters brought 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) can sound similar to genAI. But in reality, he said it’s “the opposite.”

“For years, there was this sense that, ‘Oh they’re doing something strange with computers, and they’re replacing actors,’” Cameron said. “When in fact, once you really drill down and you see what we’re doing, it’s a celebration of the actor-director moment.”

Indeed, the CBS segment shows members of the “Avatar” cast performing their underwater scenes in a 250,000-gallon water tank.

“Go to the other end of the spectrum and you’ve got generative AI, where they can make up a character, they can make up an actor, they can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt,” Cameron added. “No, that’s horrifying … That’s exactly what we’re not doing.”