As Hollywood grapples with AI‘s potential impact, Jodie Foster believes the tech is already very present in the industry.
The 2x Oscar winner recently explained why she believes last year’s Joseph Kosinski-helmed, Ehren Kruger-penned Brad Pitt starrer F1 was made with artificial intelligence, pointing to the Academy Award-winning film as an example of GenAI creating “something big and beautiful.”
“I don’t say this disparagingly—how could I? This movie went on to make millions of dollars,” she prefaced during the ‘Who Owns the Future of Hollywood?‘ talk at Aspen Ideas Festival. “But I look at a movie like F1 and I’m like, ‘F1 was made by AI.’ Wasn’t it?”
Foster continued, “I mean, the structure was exactly the structure that you would learn in school. The actors say the lines exactly the way it would be written if a computer was writing exactly what would be the right thing for that time. And 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.”
Winning the Oscar for Best Sound, as well as nominations for Best Picture, Best Film Editing and Best Visual Effects, F1 earned more than $634M globally.
While Foster sees AI “getting rid of a lot of jobs” in Hollywood, 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.”
Noting that she thinks AI could be useful for “small helpful things” like pre-visualization and storyboarding, Foster revealed her 2025 Rebecca Zlotowski-directed French mystery A Private Life featured an AI-facilitated dream sequence that she thinks turned out well, despite the fact that the images “made no sense.”
“What we all would love is that filmmakers would be able to dominate AI, and never lose sight of that,” said Foster, adding: “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.”
The use of AI in Hollywood continues to be a hot-button topic. Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA has endorsed the Trump administration’s AI policy framework, which calls for Congress to enact legislation that includes parental controls, intellectual property rights protection, First Amendment protections, expanding AI workforce development, allowing data centers to generate their own power and removing legal barriers that limit AI innovation.
Last month, Trump signed an executive order for voluntary framework in which AI companies would provide the government with access to new models for a 30-day review period before their release.