โThatโs progressโ โฆ George Lucas. Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty View image in fullscreen โThatโs progressโ โฆ George Lucas. Photograph: Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts Star Wars director calls AI technology โthe futureโ of film-making and says โthereโs nothing you can do about itโ The Star Wars director, George Lucas , has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbitโs Foot , Lucas, 82, said: โArtificial intelligence means itโs much easier for us to make movies.โ Resistance to the technology, he said, was โvery much like sitting here saying: โWell, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where itโs at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, thereโs all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon theyโll be making them into tanks, and then theyโll be killing people. Itโs terrible.โโ Adoption of such tools, continued Lucas, was an inevitability. โThereโs nothing you can do about it. Thatโs progress, itโs the future.โ Lucas is not the only director of a Star Wars film to have come out in favour of AI. The British film-maker Gareth Edwards , who made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and most recently Jurassic World Rebirth said generative AI โis a fucking genius at helping youโ. However, there are high-profile holdouts, including the director of The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan, who recently said : โIโve never seen a technology thatโs been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors โฆ that the public has so thoroughly rejected. Young people, in particular, they coined this term โAI slopโ โฆ Thereโs a sort of disdain for things AI.โ Meanwhile, Steven Soderbergh, whose documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview includes AI-generated sequences, has expressed ambivalence. โI donโt think itโs the solution to everything, and I donโt think itโs the death of everything. We are in the very early stages. Five years from now, we all may be going: โThat was a fun phase.โโ skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion Lucas also told the website his thoughts on the industryโs use of audience testing and focus groups. โI donโt like focus groups,โ he said. โThe audience doesnโt know what they want to see. If they donโt like a character, thatโs interesting, and as a film-maker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie โฆ Now, itโs all about what the fans think. That isnโt how you make the movie.โ Explore more on these topics George Lucas AI (artificial intelligence) Film industry Star Wars news Share Reuse this content