Simu Liu isn’t on board with using AI to replace actors, including and especially background performers.
Recently, the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings actor pushed back on a take from Shark Tank‘s Kevin O’Leary, who posited that replacing extras with artificial intelligence could bring down bloated production budgets on many films, including the one in which he makes his acting debut, A24’s Marty Supreme. In his initial response, Liu wrote 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.”
Speaking with Deadline on Monday during an interview for the upcoming Netflix animated film In Your Dreams, Liu expanded on that thought and explained why he felt so passionately about defending background performers’ contributions to the film industry.
“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,” he said, adding: “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.”
As for why he’s particularly sensitive to that assertion, Liu pointed to his own career, which he began as a background actor. He has spoken openly about his first acting role as a background performer in Pacific Rim, shortly after being laid off from his accounting job more than a decade ago.
Since he began his acting career without any notable industry connections or prior knowledge of the filmmaking process, he says that early experience on sets was an “invaluable” way for him to learn the technical aspects of filmmaking.
“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,” he argued.
On a more general note, Liu made it clear that he thinks art should remain a human endeavor, rather than another realm for computers to replace them.
“Film is such an artist’s medium. 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.”
Liu is far from the only Hollywood heavyweight to lament the use of AI in filmmaking. In fact, Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro recently expressed that he’d “rather die” than use the tech in any of his projects. That’s after he previously declared “f*ck AI!” during a screening of Frankenstein last week in New York City.
The post Simu Liu Says Replacing Background Actors With AI Is “So Antithetical” To His Own Career Development, Argues “Art Is Art Because It’s Human” appeared first on Deadline.
