The Demi Moore-AI debate is missing the point

Oops, it happened again. A celebrity was asked what they think about artificial intelligence and, after sharing their reflections, received intense blowback on social media.

The latest such case is Demi Moore, who is currently serving on the jury for the Cannes Film Festival. At a May 12 press conference meant to introduce the broader film event, Moore was asked by a journalist about AI, its impact on Hollywood, and potential regulation.

“I always feel ‘againstness’ breeds ‘againstness.’ AI is here,” Moore responded, clearly thinking on the spot. Rather than fight a “losing” battle, Moore suggested that artists figure out how to “work with” the technology. This, she opined, would be a far more productive path forward. The Substance star then proceeded to suggest that there is probably not enough being done in terms of regulating the technology, before concluding with one final and trite, though seemingly heartfelt, salvo.

“The truth is: There really isn’t anything to fear because what [AI] can never replace is what true art comes from, which is not the physical. It comes from the soul,” she asserted. “It comes from the spirit of each and every one of us sitting here . . . to each and every one of us that creates every day. And that they can never re-create through something that’s technical.”

Moore has since been pilloried in some corners of the internet. She’s facing both fair criticism and a bevy of offensive insults, many of which dismiss her as a pro-AI shill or, perhaps worse, a pro-AI dunce.

Moore joins a growing number of celebrities who have either volunteered to comment on, or been asked about, AI, and subsequently been sorted into camps of support and opposition.

On one side are skeptics like Guillermo del Toro, who would “rather die” than use generative AI, and Nicolas Cage, who is a “big believer in not letting robots dream for us.”

On the other are more accommodating voices like Sandra Bullock, who says AI should be used in a “constructive” way, and Reese Witherspoon, who, quite inartfully and with the verbiage of a sponsored-content hack, encouraged women to get in the game and use the tech. These statements all tend to come with attendant cheers or barbs from online fans eager to police any positive statements about the technology.

This new micro-trend of celebrity AI takes—and AI takedowns—comes as Hollywood looks to position itself in relation to a technology that stands to rapidly transform cinematic production on the whole. Through automation, AI could, critics argue, threaten jobs, further abuse intellectual property, cheapen the process of art-making, and fuel the influence of Silicon Valley firms over creative industries.

Of course, there’s also a flip side: AI advocates say that while the arrival of these new platforms does challenge a traditional business model, they also lower the barrier to entry and constitute a new way to democratize the creation of art. Think about it: Now anyone with access to a few powerful models can produce high-quality animations, even if they don’t have a multimillion-dollar film budget or fancy studio.

But the problem with forcing anyone, including celebrities, into pro- and anti-AI camps is that AI is already here. Artificial intelligence also continues to be a wildly vague term that can refer to anything from machine-learning algorithms used to catch typos in scripts and assist in video editing to extremely impressive visuals rendered with just a few prompts to a large language model. In the jumble of online discourse, all of these phenomena are swept together into pro-AI or anti-AI contingents.

Yes, celebrities are making all sorts of cringey comments on AI, but lambasting them for acknowledging the technology is here, likely already endemic, and even comes with some compelling use cases isn’t progressing the conversation. AI is currently shaping our digital and material lives in ways that are useful and exciting and noxious and terrifying, often through mechanisms that are mostly beyond the consumptive or creative purview of any one person.

What might be more important is pushing people to think specifically about what they mean when they talk about AI and more critically about the ways AI is influencing the distribution of power, wealth, and even creativity. Dealing with AI requires looking for a more equitable vision of these tools, rather than polarizing ourselves as pro or against a technological category that remains extremely poorly defined.

Consider the thoughts expressed by Paul Laverty, a screenwriter and lawyer also serving on the Cannes Film Festival jury, in a follow-up to Moore.

“I think we have to look at the first thing and see who owns it, because they decide on the algorithms that affect our lives in the deepest way,” Laverty said. “People are beginning to realize that we should not let these tech bros—billionaires who are mostly right-wing libertarians—dictate how we live our lives. What’s the effect to be [on] workers, beyond artists, ordinary workers and society and our children?”

Which is to say: Maybe we ought to spend less time policing celebrity AI takes and more time interrogating the people building the systems themselves.

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