Two Hollywood legends have given AI the middle finger, and the internet loves it

Key topics:Emma Thompson goes viral criticizing AI’s intrusion in writing tasksGuillermo del Toro publicly rejects generative AI in filmmakingCelebrities’ anti-AI rants highlight growing creative and public divide.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Jason Bailey.Emma Thompson is very good at many things — acting, screenwriting, penning children’s books — and in recent years, she’s also become quite accomplished at going viral. She did it again this week, during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, with a furious (and furiously funny) profanity-laden dismissal of the increasingly inescapable scourge of generative artificial intelligence.She wasn’t specifically talking about the high-end use of AI in filmmaking. Her irritation stemmed from the first step of the process: transferring her writing, done in longhand, into a Word document. With a flurry of f-bombs and mounting exasperation, she described how tired she is of the software asking if she’d like it to rewrite her work — a moment that perfectly captures the creeping intrusion of AI into tasks that once felt simple and organic.This moment comes as filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has also attracted attention on social media and in the press for his similarly pointed commentary on AI this month. The technology has been a frequent topic while promoting his (notably handmade) new film adaptation of Frankenstein. A clip from the New York City screening, which he closed out by using a loud and proud expletive aimed at the technology, drew widespread attention after it was posted on TikTok by Vanity Fair. So did a quote from his interview with NPR, where he said he’d “rather die” than use generative AI.Soundbites like Thompson’s and del Toro’s could mark an important turning point in the debate over AI’s use and implementation for two key reasons..Read more:.ASML surges as AI boom fuels record chipmaking machine demand.The first is tone: Their rancor and candor make them stand out. They are choosing to be impolite; they won’t shruggingly accept this technology, which kills both creativity and jobs, as inevitable, even if some directors and producers have. The passion in their rhetoric underscores that battle lines are being drawn over AI within the creative class. It’s a rift that may polarize moviegoers.We’ve already seen small controversies over use of AI — some audiences boycotted last year's indie horror movie Late Night with the Devil, for example, over its filmmakers’ use of the technology for a handful of onscreen illustrations. It's enough of a hot-button issue that filmmakers who deploy it are going to have to answer to skeptics, while audiences who embrace generative AI (and use it themselves) may be more likely to seek out films and shows that utilize it.Concerns about how the technology would affect Hollywood were loudly expressed during the simultaneous WGA and SAG strikes of 2023. But del Toro and Thompson’s messaging goes beyond those Hollywood-specific anxieties because of how much AI has reshaped daily life since then, which brings us to the second reason their viral moments carry weight.Two years ago, questions about AI existed largely in the abstract, with professionals reacting to the concept more than its practical use. Today, as AI has become part of daily experience, Thompson’s and del Toro’s frustrations resonate with a much wider audience..In these moments of division — between those who see AI as progress and those who see it as theft — it’s hard to overstate how powerful a short, funny, shareable clip can be in spreading a message and shaping public perception. During the Hollywood strikes, I wrote about how the Writers Guild members used tweets and soundbites to one-up Hollywood executives for nearly 150 days.It was a winning PR strategy then, and we may be seeing another version of that with Thompson, del Toro and other celebrities who are railing against what they see as an erosion of the creative process..Read more:.The AI boom: The Magnificent Seven may no longer be the market leaders. And that’s ok.The fact that del Toro is using his promotional tour (for a project exploring the destructive nature of technology run rampant) to speak out against AI is a keen indicator of how much the technology is on people’s minds at this particular moment — especially as the industry is beginning to reveal itself as a financial sinkhole, and quite possibly a bubble that’s on the verge of bursting. If and when that occurs, such artists as him and Thompson will certainly have something to say about it — likely in short, quotable and sharable video form..© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Two Hollywood legends have given AI the middle finger, and the internet loves it

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