Nicolas Cage: ‘AI Is a Nightmare to Me. It’s Inhumane’

Actor Nicolas Cage has come out against artificial intelligence (AI) being used in movies as a means to replace actors and writers.

Cage issued his denunciation of AI during an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment when talking about his minor cameo in The Flash that was obviously rendered in a computer.

“AI is a nightmare to me,” Cage said. “It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence … I would be very unhappy if people were taking my art … and appropriating [it].”

Regarding his cameo in The Flash, a reference to Tim Burton’s infamous Superman Lives movie starring Cage that never came to be, the Leaving Las Vegas star believes it was CGI, not AI.

“When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider,” Cage said. “I did not do that. That was not what I did. I don’t think it was [created by] AI. I know Tim [Burton] is upset about AI, as I am. It was CGI, OK, so that they could de-age me, and I’m fighting a spider. I didn’t do any of that, so I don’t know what happened there.”

Cage actually did visit the set to film his cameo, but the final version contained none of what he was told. He elaborated:

What I was supposed to do was literally just be standing in an alternate dimension, if you will, and witnessing the destruction of the universe.

Kal-El was bearing witness [to] the end of a universe, and you can imagine with that short amount of time that I had, what that would mean in terms of what I can convey. I had no dialogue [so I had to] convey with my eyes the emotion. So that’s what I did. I was on set for maybe three hours.

Cage, however, sang the praises of director Andy Muschietti. “[Andy] is a terrific director, he is a great guy and a great director, and I loved his two It movies,” he said.

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan recently referred to AI as a giant plagiarism machine.

“I think it’s a lot of horseshit. It’s a giant plagiarism machine, in its current form. I think ChatGPT knows what it’s writing like a toaster knows that it’s making toast. There’s no intelligence — it’s a marvel of marketing,” he said.

Paul Roland Bois directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.