20th Century FoxAvatar director James Cameron has been weighing in on the controversy surrounding “actors” created by generative AI, calling that use of the technology “horrifying.”
Reports of an AI creation called “Tilly Norwood” made waves in the film industry in September, with talent studio Xicoia claiming she would be the next Scarlett Johannson or Natalie Portman.
Hollywood immediately clapped back, with Scream star Melissa Barrera calling it “gross,” and Mathilda actress Mara Wilson asking about the “hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her.”
Now Avatar: Fire and Ash director James Cameron is having his say, referencing use of computers and computer-generated effects in his movies, and explaining how that’s very different to what’s happening with so-called AI performers.
James Cameron says creating actors is exactly what he’s “not doing” on the Avatar movies
20th Century StudiosCameron says there was early skepticism about how he was making the Avatar movies via performance capture.
“For years, there was this sense that, ‘Oh, they’re doing something strange with computers and they’re replacing actors,'” he tells CBS News. “When in fact, once you really drill down and you see what we’re doing, it’s a celebration of the actor-director moment.”
He describes the process as follows: “Performance capture, we use a whole bunch of cameras to capture the body performance of the actor. And we use a single camera – or now we use actually two – to video their face. They’re in a close-up 100% of the time. But there’s a beautiful thing about being in a close-up 100% of the time. It’s very much like theater rehearsal.”
Cameron is then quick to point out this is very different to what “AI talent studios” like Xicoia are doing with something like Tilly Norwood.
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“Go to the other end of the spectrum, and you’ve got generative AI, where they can make up a character,” Cameron continues. “They can make up an actor. They can make up a performance from scratch with a text prompt. It’s like, no. That’s horrifying to me. That’s the opposite. That’s exactly what we’re not doing.”
You can see the fruits of Cameron’s performance capture labours very soon, when Avatar: Fire and Ash hits screens on December 19, 2025. While for more on the AI debate, check out controversies concerning movies Megalopolis, Late Night With the Devil, and Thunderbolts, and TV shows True Detective and the One Piece anime.