When Jodie Foster sat down to watch a recent Oscar-winning film, she was left convinced it had been made using AI.
Hollywood is currently facing a crisis with the emergence of artificial intelligence within the industry, with many worried that generative AI tools could replace their roles.
Silence of the Lambs actor Foster is not as concerned as some – and actually thinks GenAI has already created “something big and beautiful” in the form of Brad Pitt’s 2025 film F1.
Foster, 63 was speaking on an Aspen Ideas Festival panel titled Who Owns the Future of Hollywood?, when she said: “I don’t say this disparagingly – how could I? This movie went on to make millions of dollars. But I look at a movie like F1 and I’m like, ‘F1 was made by AI.’ Wasn’t it?”
She said “the structure was exactly the structure that you would learn in school” and that the film’s stars, including Pitt, Damson Idris and Kerry Condon “said the lines exactly the way it would be written if a computer was writing exactly what would be the right thing for that time”.
“They were able to dominate the technology to make something big and beautiful and potentially where a lot of the information comes from other places,” Foster continued.
F1, which shot racing scenes during the Grand Prix, follows a Formula One racing driver who returns after a 30-year absence to save his former teammate’s underdog team from collapse.
The Independent has contacted Apple Original Films and director Joseph Kosinski for comment.
Foster said she believes AI could best be used for “small, helpful things”, including storyboarding scripts, but expressed fears it would “get rid of a lot of jobs” in Hollywood.
However, she added: “Hopefully, things like unions will be able to come in and say, you can use my actor 20 times, but you’re going to pay him 20 times. And I think that’s fair.”
She suggested the goal for filmmakers should now be to “dominate” the tech as, “if we are able to dominate AI consistently over time, we will be able to make things that reflect us, and we can make things better”.
Foster’s latest film, the French mystery A Private Life, features a dream sequence that director Rebecca Zlotowski generated using AI. Foster believes the result was good but admitted that it “made no sense”.
F1 was a box office smash hit, earning $634.1m (£474.2m) worldwide to become Pitt’s highest-grossing film to date. It raced its way to a Best Picture Oscar nomination and took home the trophy for Best Sound.
Over the last decade, AI has found several uses in the movie and television industry, from de-aging actors, analysing patterns and behaviours of viewers on streaming platforms, bringing back the voices of late actors and even helping stitch together entire movie trailers.
During the 2023 actors’ strike in Hollywood, historic protections were enacted, with studios now requiring informed consent to use digital replicas.
But last year, concern was rife when it was revealed that talent agents were looking to sign an AI actor named Tilly Norwood.
Tilly, a white, brunette and brown-eyed AI creation, is by Eline Van der Velden, CEO of AI-focused production company Particle 6, and the AI talent studio Xicoia.
Van der Velden said in a statement posted online: “To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art.”
“Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity.”
The creator claimed that AI is not a replacement for people, but a new tool or paintbrush.
“Just as animation, puppetry, or CGI opened fresh possibilities without taking away from live acting, AI offers another way to imagine and build stories,” Van der Velden wrote.
In the Heights star Melissa Barrera and Toni Collette are among the Hollywood stars who have called out the development on social media, with some even suggesting a boycott of agencies that work with AI talent.
