‘It’s a genius, but has no taste’: Gareth Edwards on why AI is the future of filmmaking

The director of *Rogue One* and *Jurassic World Rebirth* has thrown his weight behind generative AI, calling it a tool that could eventually surpass traditional CGI. Speaking at Amazon’s AI on the Lot event in Culver City, Gareth Edwards didn’t hold back. “It is a fucking genius at helping you,” he said. “I can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t become interested in this stuff as a filmmaker. It’s so clearly a tool that might be up there with the camera.”

Edwards sees AI’s greatest strength in pre-production. “It’s only good for iteration and discovering what the movie should be,” he explained. “Then once you know what it is, go in and start making it your movie.” He compared working with AI to having a second-unit director who is “a billionaire on acid. It’ll do anything you ask, not a problem. Sometimes it’ll go batshit crazy. You give it notes, and it’ll just do something totally different. But it’s worth it.”

Veteran writer-director Paul Schrader echoed the sentiment. He argued that the real breakthrough won’t be flashy monsters but creating an AI protagonist that audiences care about. “When you do the new Clint Eastwood, but you don’t say the words ‘Clint Eastwood’ to AI, you just describe him. And he comes up as Clint Eastwood,” Schrader said. He also predicted the end of background actors: “Why are we paying extras $180 a day when they look so plastic? Why don’t we just make them? We can and we will.”

Not everyone is convinced. Critics have panned AI-generated film segments, including those in Steven Soderbergh’s John Lennon documentary, calling them “blandly generic.” Edwards, however, says the technology is evolving too fast to predict. “Anybody saying they know exactly what’s going to happen over the next five years is just a liar.”