As the AI debate continues (some remain staunchly opposed, some are all for it, and others see it as an inevitability we're just going to have to get used to), recent comments from Shark Tank investor-turned-actor Kevin O’Leary have garnered a lot of attention.
O'Leary, who makes his acting debut in A24’s Marty Supreme, is under the impression that productions could save millions by replacing background extras with AI stand-ins.
“Almost every scene had as many as 150 extras,” O’Leary told World of Travel. “Those people had to stay awake for 18 hours, fully dressed, moving around in the background — not even always visible on camera — and it cost millions of dollars to do that.”
“Tilly Norwell [he means AI actress Tilly Norwood] is an actor who’s burst onto the scene — she’s 100 percent AI. She doesn’t exist, but she’s a great actress. She can appear at any age, she doesn’t need to eat, and she works 24 hours a day. The union is going out of their minds. I’d argue, for the sake of art, you should allow it in certain cases — and extras are a great use case. You can’t tell the difference. Just put 100 Tilly Norwells in there and you’re good.”
As you can probably imagine, O'Leary's AI stance has come in for a lot of backlash, and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu is one of the first major Hollywood stars to directly respond in an interview.
Liu initially responded on X last week - “Sure, blame the extras making 15-22 dollars an hour struggling to make a living and not above the line people making multiple millions" - and has now elaborated while speaking to Deadline.
“First of all, I thought that take that I was responding to is a really dumb take, particularly really tone deaf and out of touch and also just kind of incorrect. The idea that these background actors who are making minimum wage are somehow the reason why movies are now costing too much, that’s simply not true. This idea of replacing actors with AI, it’s so antithetical to my development as an actor. I think if I was able to learn from that experience, then how many other people are doing the same? In depriving the world of background actors, you’re also depriving people the opportunity to kind of pick up these skills.”
“Film is such an artist’s medium," Liu continued. "Of all the uses of AI that have come forth, replacing art is just, I feel like, the last thing that anybody wants to do with AI. I feel like art is art because it’s human. It comes down to even the way that extras move…it all plays into the frame, and it’s all meaningful to the story. I really do feel like human beings are smart. I feel like when we see somebody in the background not moving like a human, we know. I feel like we could still tell the difference, at least right now.”
Though major studios have dabbled in AI (mostly only for marketing purposes... for now), we're probably still a long way off from seeing an army of Tilly Norwoods populating a crowd scene in a Marvel Studios movie, for example. But it will probably all depend on how many other actors, directors and studio execs use their status to speak out against it like Liu has here.
Liu is expected to return as Shang-Chi in one or both of the upcoming Avengers movies. As for a direct sequel to his solo film, there's been no official word since it was announced shorty after the first movie's release, but Liu remains confident that it is "definitely" going to happen.
“A lot of it is above my pay grade, but it’s definitely happening,” the actor recently told The Press Trust of India. “[I’m] just very excited to kind of work on it and it’s going to be amazing. I really can’t say anything beyond that.”