James Cameron says AI actors are ‘horrifying to me’

Mon, 01 Dec 2025

Avatar director, known for his advocacy of new technology, told interviewer generative AI performance puts ‘all human experience into a blender’

Avatar director James Cameron has called AI actors “horrifying” and said what generative AI technology creates is “an average”.

Cameron was speaking to CBS on Sunday Morning in the run-up to the release of the third Avatar film, subtitled Fire and Ash, and was asked about the pioneering technology he used in his film-making. After praising motion-capture performance as “a celebration of the actor-director moment”, Cameron expressed his disdain for artificial intelligence. “Go to the other end of the spectrum [from motion capture] 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. It’s like, no. That’s horrifying to me. That’s the opposite. That’s exactly what we’re not doing.”