George Lucas likens AI skeptics to people who cling to horses and carriages George Lucas

Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of filmmakers embracing the increasing use of artificial intelligence tools in filmmaking.

Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “AI means it’s easier for us to make films.”

He continued: “Resistance to new technology is a lot like sitting here and saying: Well, I think the horse and cart are really where it’s at. These cars, they’re breaking down, they need fuel, there’s all kinds of problems with them, and pretty soon they’re going to turn them into tanks, and then they’re going to kill people. It’s terrible.”

Lucas continued that the adoption of such tools is inevitable. “There’s nothing you can do about it. This is progress, this is the future.”

Lucas isn’t the only Star Wars director to advocate for artificial intelligence. British director Gareth Edwards, who directed Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, as well as more recently Jurassic World Rebirth, said generative AI is “pretty genius at helping you.”

However, there are high-profile dissidents, including “Odyssey” director Christopher Nolan, who recently commented: “I’ve never seen a technology that has been so successfully embraced by Wall Street and investors…that the public has completely rejected it. Young people, in particular, are the ones who coined this term ‘backward AI’…There’s a kind of disdain for AI stuff.”

Meanwhile Steven Soderbergh, who directed his documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview It includes sequences generated by artificial intelligence, and has expressed contradiction. “I don’t think this is the answer to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now, we’ll probably all say, ‘That was an interesting time.'”

In addition to AI, Lucas also told the site his thoughts on the industry’s use of audience testing and focus groups. “I don’t like focus groups,” he said. “Audiences don’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a filmmaker I want to know why. But when studios hear that, they get the wrong message. They allow the audience to actually make the movie… Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That’s not how you make a movie.”