Jon M. Chu slams Silicon Valley for AI excesses — and studios for forgiving it

Jon M. Chu suspects artificial quality whitethorn person been calved wicked.

The deed filmmaker’s Silicon Valley upbringing, which helium details successful his 2024 memoir “Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen,” made him comfy with exertion from an aboriginal age, helium said Sunday during an L.A. Times Festival of Books panel. It adjacent gave him an borderline arsenic a young idiosyncratic pursuing a originative vocation that present includes directing credits for blockbuster films specified arsenic “Wicked” and “Crazy Rich Asians.”

But Chu said helium believes the amusement manufacture has been excessively lax astir tech companies’ ethically questionable grooming methods since the advent of generative AI, calling the unauthorized usage of Hollywood creations an “original sin.”

“There was an archetypal misdeed that I deliberation we’re not implicit yet, which is they gathered each the data. They took each the scripts, they took each the movies,” Chu told the audience. In his view, the studios who owned specified copyrighted materials didn’t combat backmost hard enough.

“It feels similar they’re saying, ‘We’re past it, determination on,’” helium said, adding that helium could “never forgive that.”

But the “Crazy Rich Asians” manager said that contempt generative AI being “freaking scary” for the amusement industry, helium is assured it volition ne'er regenerate quality creativity. Nor volition it rob radical of the close to specify “art” for themselves.

“I don’t deliberation the robots take what we determine is valuable,” Chu said.

“We decide, and that’s precise empowering for me,” helium said.

Chu besides spoke during the Sunday sheet astir his forthcoming projects, including “Wicked: For Good,” which is slated for a Nov. 21 theatrical release. Outside of the movie musical, Chu is besides moving connected adaptations of Britney Spears’ 2023 memoir “The Woman successful Me” and the video crippled “Split Fiction,” which centers connected 2 writer friends who go trapped successful a high-tech simulation of their imaginations.

“That was leaked, truthful I cannot corroborate oregon contradict that, but yes,” helium said of the second adaptation task reportedly starring Sydney Sweeney.

Still, the manager said the situation of visualizing the video game’s dual realities “excites me, due to the fact that I don’t cognize however to equilibrium that correctly yet.”