An artificial intelligence (AI) actress is set to make “her” film debut in an upcoming feature film “Misaligned.” Noted to be a collaboration between directors, producers, writers, and AI specialists, when announced in July of 2026 it was immediately hit with intense backlash from both audiences and artists alike.
The criticism was echoed by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA,) the largest labor union within the entertainment industry. The union stated that the usage of AI directly harms creatives as AI is used in place of real humans. This controversy extends back years, driven by the dynamic between preserving creativity as technology evolves and the deep impacts these developments have on artists and creativity.
“(AI) suddenly takes away all the potential to be creative and replaces it with perfection that isn’t human,” Twyla Sheridan, a Berkeley High School sophomore, said.
The usage of things like computer generated imagery (CGI) and technological special effects began in the 1950s and 1960s, after being invented for the military before being adapted for film.
Currently, visual effects (VFX) industries has an annual growth rate of around 10 percent each year, and is considered one of the fastest growing industries within the entertainment sector.
While it is true that prominent film directors such as Christopher Nolan reject the usage of VFX, who instead relies on heavy practical effects, the usage of CGI is largely reliant on humans.
“With CGI, there’s a more human quality, because it’s going to make mistakes. It’s going to be exactly what the author wants,” BHS senior Sofia Dodge said.
Besides the obvious intricacies that include green screens and sensors, CGI and VFX technicians spend a large portion of their jobs manipulating tiny pixel elements to create something new.
In some instances, the effects can take years to create. The same does not apply to the usage of AI. Unlike CGI and VFX, AI’s process is formulaic, does not rely on heavy human intervention, and therefore is significantly faster at creation than VFX. After OpenAI and ChatGPT went public in 2022, many portions of the film and television industry began heavily using AI as it is faster and considerably cheaper than CGI and VFX.
The difference between AI and technological special effects is heightened when considering the impact on employment and artistic creativity. CGI and VFX depend heavily on artists, animators, technicians and filmmakers to create a cohesive piece.
Hundreds of people may be involved in the creation of a single visual effect in a film or television scene.
In this aspect, the world’s technological advancements has created new creative opportunities for those in the entertainment industry. Those include the likes of technical engineers, animators, and other visual effects work which extends into nearly every aspect of film making.
Fundamentally, AI is a substantially different technological development. It incorporates generative knowledge and technology, with no connection to people and technicians at all.
With the exception of humans providing a prompt, AI is capable of producing essentially every other aspect of the body of work. While the industry has not gotten to the point in which AI is responsible for the creation of films, it is slowly being more and integrated. This includes aspects such as the de-aging of characters, subtitling, and translation.
SAG-AFTRA members even went on strike in 2023 as many artists felt that there was not an established protocol that transparently communicated how production companies were going to use AI.
“There may absolutely be benefits (to AI) but it is hard for me to see how AI will not reduce the number of jobs of people who make a living making movies,” BHS junior Solomon Gutride said.
This doesn’t only apply to employment, but the question of authentic creativity is also prominent. Art has often been considered something that is reflective of a human experience, whether realistic or fantastical.
While art, overall, is inherently subjective in nature, it is important to recognize the rapidly increasing reliance the world and film industries have on AI.
Replacing human creators with the work of artificial technology is taking away jobs, creativity, and artistry in the name of convenience, and continuously raises concerns about the usage of AI in the entertainment sector.