AI video gains boost from filmmakers James Cameron, Andy Serkis

James Cameron is the award-wining director of — in his own words, “three-out-of-the-four-highest-grossing films,” — namely, Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Titanic, among many other classics.

So it raised more than a few eyebrows and dropped quite a few jaws today when he announced that he was joining the board of Stability AI, the company founded upon and responsible for developing the original Stable Diffusion open source AI model that underpins most generative AI video and image making products to this day.

As Stability AI announced in a press release today, Cameron will join the board alongside Dana Settle, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Greycroft; Colin Bryant, COO and General Partner of Coatue Management; and Sean Parker, entrepreneur and former President of Facebook, who serves as Executive Chairman.

The news comes as a big victory and vote of confidence in Stability AI, which has endured a rocky year including an ongoing lawsuit by creators over training data, as well as reports of financial mismanagement and cost overruns by its prior CEO and co-founder Emad Mostaque, who ultimately resigned from the company in March 2024 following the negative press and questions about his leadership. He was succeeded initially by co-interim CEOs Shan Shan Wong (COO) and Christian Laforte (CTO), before being replaced by Prem Akkaraju, former CEO of visual effects company Weta Digital.

Why Cameron is linking up with Stability AI now

Cameron said his interest in joining was spurred by the creative potential of AI in filmmaking, especially when combined with more traditional/existing computer generated imagery (CGI) technology, in which computer artists manually draw and program character designs, settings, and effects for all manner and genre of films.

As the Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Aliens, Abyss, and True Lies director put it in a statement included in the release:

“I’ve spent my career seeking out emerging technologies that push the very boundaries of what’s possible, all in the service of telling incredible stories. I was at the forefront of CGI over three decades ago, and I’ve stayed on the cutting edge since. Now, the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave. The convergence of these two totally different engines of creation will unlock new ways for artists to tell stories in ways we could have never imagined. Stability AI is poised to lead this transformation.“

Indeed, it should be no surprise that Cameron of all filmmakers would embrace AI given his prior embrace of other, at the time, cutting-edge and newfangled tech revolutions, including 3D scanning for motion capture, as VentureBeat previously covered last year.

Cameron has also recently been upscaling and remastering some of his older works including True Lies in 4K, to the chagrin of some viewers and critics who say the results are — similarly to his contemporary George Lucas’s Star Wars Special Edition remasters — unnecessary and ultimately degrading to the quality and integrity of the original films. To which Cameron has issued his characteristic blunt and unapologetic dismissals.

Parker highlighted Cameron’s addition as a pivotal moment for the company, stating, “Having an artist of his caliber with a seat at the table marks the start of a new chapter for Stability AI. We’re incredibly excited by the limitless potential for creative collaboration between generative media platforms and the artistic community.”

On X and social media writ large, the reactions were decidedly more mixed. While many up-and-coming amateur and indie AI filmmakers celebrated the news of one of the most iconic directors embracing their new medium for its storytelling potential, others who have worked in more traditional filmmaking or have previously criticized AI for what they see as the exploitative nature of how it was trained — on data scraped en masse from the web, including potentially copyrighted works of other human artists without express permission — expressed their disappointment and disapproval in Cameron’s decision.

And many pointed to the fact that Cameron previously relied on Weta Digital, the New Zealand special effects firm co-founded by his peer and friend director Peter Jackson (of the Lord of the Rings blockbusters in the early 2000s), for his effects, especially in the new Avatar: The Way of Water and upcoming films.

Given Stability AI’s new CEO, Prem Akkaraju was formerly CEO of Weta, it seems natural and sensible to conclude that Akkaraju — and perhaps others who have worked for or with Weta, including Jackson — may have influenced or swayed Cameron to join up with Stability now.

Another Weta collaborator embraces AI: Andy Serkis

Andy Serkis, the New Zealand actor famed for his motion capture work in performances including Gollum in Peter Jackson’s aforementioned Lord of the Rings trilogy and its Hobbit spinoff movies, as well as the intelligent ape Cesar in the new Rise of the Planet of the Apes films, and director in his own right of Sony’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, is also jumping headfirst into the AI filmmaking fray.

As reported in Hollywood trade magazine Deadline yesterday, Serkis allegedly told UK lawmakers his production company Imaginarium is:

working on a “narrative driven story” that kicks off with 2D characters created using voice actors before they “come out into the AR [augmented reality] world.” “At that point they become ‘AI characters’ authored by artists and directors,” Serkis told a panel at the UK’s Labour Party conference. “They are in a world where you can have direct relationships with these CGI characters.”

The project sounds very conceptual and experimental, but Serkis’s willingness to embrace AI shows yet another high-profile name on the cutting-edge of Hollywood is taking the tech seriously for its creative potential.

A new era in filmmaking emerges

The news of Serkis and Cameron embracing AI comes on the heels last week of the industry-rattling news that film studio Lionsgate (maker of the John Wick, Twilight, and Hunger Games franchises, among many other films) was partnering with AI startup Runway to train a custom model of Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha video AI generation model on Lionsgate’s catalog of 20,000-plus titles.

Lionsgate said at the time it plans to use the custom model to develop storyboards, concepts, and special effects for new films.

Also today, the Dor Brothers, an AI filmmaking collaborative known for their unsettlingly and often hilariously realistic satires of politicians gang-banging and toting guns and committing criminal acts, published the first all-AI video featuring a likeness of rapper Snoop Dogg, done in collaboration with him.

So even as AI model providers including Stability and Runway face down class action lawsuits by human visual artists for training on their work without express consent or permission — which the artists accuse of violating copyrights — it seems some of the biggest names in Hollywood and entertainment writ large are hopping on the AI video train. As I’ve argued before, those looking to work in these creative industries would do well to start experimenting with the tech now, lest they risk being left behind.

And again, the tech is already available to enterprises far beyond Hollywood. Now the playing field is more evenly matched, with individuals and companies having access to AI video generation models for use in making advertisements, internal communications and training videos, branding videos, concepts, and more.