James Cameron Bans AI From Avatar, Warns Big AI Is the Real Existential Threat
Amid a tech shake-up, Hollywood draws a line: celebrate actors, don’t replace them—and trust the industry to police itself.
James Cameron is, as ever, not subtle about AI. He’s fine with generative AI existing in the world, but he’s drawing a hard line for his own movies: no generative AI in 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' — or any Avatar film, period. And while everyone’s arguing about deepfakes and script tools, he’s fixated on the bigger, scarier version of AI that he keeps calling an existential threat.
No AI in Avatar, period
In a new chat with ComicBook, Cameron said he isn’t anti–generative AI in general — he just won’t use it on Pandora. He wants humans in the loop, especially the actors.
'We honor and celebrate actors. We don’t replace actors.'
He added that Hollywood will likely end up policing itself on this stuff. But there’s a catch: we can only 'find our way through it as artists' if artists still exist — which is why his real anxiety isn’t about text or image generators. It’s the bigger, open-ended AI push that worries him.
The 'big AI' worry (yes, from the Terminator guy)
Cameron has the receipts for being nervous about runaway AI — he literally built a franchise around Skynet. In 'Terminator', a power-mad AI nukes the planet and sends killer androids after what’s left of us. So, yeah, his brand of caution isn’t new.
What’s different now is that tech folks are actually using his franchise as shorthand. According to Cameron, they’re openly talking about the 'Skynet Problem' while still racing toward advanced AI with, as he puts it, 'billions and billions' being thrown at it.
- He says the current debate is all about 'alignment' — training and constraining AI so it serves human good.
- His pushback: who decides what 'good' is? We can’t agree on anything now, so whose morality gets baked in?
- His bottom line is bleak: we’re not going to figure this out in time.
If that sounds doom-y, well, it’s Cameron. And to be fair, the man has been warning about this longer than most of Silicon Valley has been alive. Meanwhile, on the filmmaking side, his stance is pretty simple: keep the actors, skip the AI.
When you can see it
'Avatar: Fire and Ash' opens in theaters on December 19.