Actor Ashton Kutcher Faces Backlash Over AI Comments
Ashton Kutcher addresses the backlash he’s faced after suggesting that AI could replace numerous roles in the entertainment industry. Speaking at the Berggruen Salon in Los Angeles with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Kutcher praised OpenAI’s generative video tool, Sora.
“I have a beta version of it, and it’s pretty amazing,” Kutcher said, as reported by Variety. “You can generate any footage that you want. You can create good 10, 15-second videos that look very real. It still makes mistakes. It still doesn’t quite understand physics… But if you look at the generation of this that existed one year ago as compared to Sora, it’s leaps and bounds. In fact, there’s footage in it that I would say you could easily use in a major motion picture or a television show.”
Kutcher emphasized that generative AI could significantly reduce production costs. “Why would you go out and shoot an establishing shot of a house in a television show when you could just create the establishing shot for $100? To go out and shoot it would cost you thousands of dollars,” he explained. “Action scenes of me jumping off of this building, you don’t have to have a stunt person go do it, you could just go do it [with AI].”
The 46-year-old actor also noted that as AI programs and technology continue to improve, the results would be even better. “You’ll be able to render a whole movie. You’ll just come up with an idea for a movie, then it will write the script, then you’ll input the script into the video generator, and it will generate the movie,” he said. “Instead of watching some movie that somebody else came up with, I can just generate and then watch my own movie.”
Kutcher’s comments sparked significant backlash online. “Imagine being Ashton Kutcher stepping onto a film set now, after coming out and advocating for all those crew people to lose their jobs and f-king starve. Gutsy choice, bud,” wrote one person on X. Another critic stated, “You could probably make an Ashton Kutcher movie with OpenAI’s Sora, but you couldn’t make a good movie with it.”
In response to the criticism, Kutcher took to X to clarify his stance. “I don’t think AI will replace the film industry or creative arts. It’s an amazing tool that we should learn to work with to become more prolific and efficient as artists,” he wrote. “In the same way we use Avid, final draft, greenscreen, Led big, and other technical tools. Acting like it doesn’t exist will be catastrophic.”
He continued, “Jobs will change, denying that is turning a blind eye to facts. There used to be someone that taped the film together. There used to be someone that checked the gate. We need to be prepared and understand what’s coming.”
The controversy deepened when it was revealed that Kutcher has a venture capitalist firm that invests in AI. “The fact that Ashton Kutcher has a venture capitalist firm that is currently investing in AI should have been disclosed in the article,” one commenter noted. “He’s not speaking as a filmmaker (because he’s never been a director, DP, writer, or editor) he’s speaking as a salesman for investments.”
Kutcher and music manager Guy Oseary co-founded Sound Venture, which includes companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Stability AI in its portfolio. These comments come as the debate of how deep AI can scale into entertainment continues to roar, with many fearing job losses and others seeing the technology’s promise.
Originally posted on OpenDataScience.com
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