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— This is the big question of the moment. Everyone is talking about it, obviously — said James Cameron in an interview with GLOBO on the occasion of the release of “Avatar: Fire & Ashes”.

Cameron: ‘It could be tamed’

The filmmaker, usually cited as an apocalyptic futurist for having inserted in the story of “The Terminator”, in 1984, a kind of AI which turns against humans, Skynet, today has a less dark vision by joining the board of directors of one of the American giants of generative technologies.

—I joined the Stability AI board to study this business and see how it works, how it thinks, how developers work. And I actually challenged them to create tools that could integrate into existing visual effects workflows. My idea is not to make human artists obsolete, but rather to accelerate our pace — says the filmmaker. — The big films that I like to make are expensive. Visual effects processes remain expensive. If theater revenues continue to decline, these films will cease to exist. I believe AI can be tamed to reduce costs and execute parts of the workflow.

Diego Martins, director and founder of the A Dream By studio, also defends the favorable use of AI tools in audiovisual, with the aim of enhancing and reducing processes. He points out that the technology is already widely present in the industry:

— Today, all post-production tools already integrate AI. The time is approaching when AI will be included in VFX (special effects) software, underlines the Brazilian. — An interesting thing is to think of AI as decentralization and democratization. We know that audiovisual is expensive. And it takes a long time to raise money for a project, whether it’s a short or a feature film. To carry out a project with AI today, you can do it with less money and be far from major centers, like Rio and São Paulo.

This really seems to be the conversation among creators around the world. Although filmmakers such as Guillermo del Toro and Tim Burton have consistently spoken out against the use of artificial intelligence in the broadcast industry, many attempt to debate the limits of this technology.

— Everyone realizes that if you can’t beat them, you better join them — emphasizes Eline Van der Velden, founder of the production company Particle 6, commenting on the agreement between Disney and OpenAI. — I think AI suffers from a public relations problem. Most people have heard that it would kill jobs and be bad for the environment, but we have seen that this is not true.

Van der Velden and Particle 6 made waves in 2025 with the introduction of Tilly Norwood, the first AI-created actress. The announcement had the effect of a bombshell in Hollywood and sparked criticism from actors’ and screenwriters’ unions, who have been concerned about the issue since the simultaneous strikes in 2023.

— Tilly really started as an art project. I had seen these characters and influencers created with AI and thought, “I want to create one that can tell stories in our world.” And I didn’t want to create a deepfake of an existing actress, the exec says. — I understand that a lot of people thought she was going to take their jobs. Fortunately, this is not the case. The idea was just to show what is possible. Tilly is not going to take the job away from a real actor or actress. The idea is that Tilly functions as a sort of narrative vehicle, a way for filmmakers to learn how to work with AI.

If in certain areas of audiovisual the scenario is one of possibilities, in others the implications are darker and arouse fear. This is the case with dubbing. Professionals in the field have frequently spoken out against tools that replace their work and are already a reality in the industry.

In February, Prime Video users came across a Spanish film, “The Silence of Marcos Tremmer,” dubbed 100% using AI tools, which drew criticism not only from the voice actors, but also from viewers who noticed simple translation errors.

“The dubbing is horrible, because there is no feeling, it was not done by one person. Everything is in sync, the words are spoken, but there is no breathing,” voice actor Robson Kumode said in a video on social media.

Fábio Azevedo, president of Dublar (Brazilian Association of Dubbing Professionals), criticizes the lack of regulation in the field and the efforts of companies, most of them foreign, to implement AI dubbing.

— We hope for regulations that would force Brazilian dubbing to be done in Brazil with Brazilian actors, since national dubbing is one of our cultural manifestations — says Azevedo. — We have received an absurd amount of reports of other voice actors being approached by companies wanting to purchase their voices to power AI programs. We suggested that they not do it because it would cause a lot of damage.

Scenario authors are also some of the professionals most critical of AI tools. Director and screenwriter Igor Verde, known for his work on the series “Reencarne” and “Os Quatro da Candelária”, reveals that AI tools, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, are already used by screenwriters for certain functions such as text summaries or producing an argument based on premises, but that the use of artificial intelligence in writing tends to waste more time than it ultimately saves.

— Writing is still on the list of tasks in which AI increases time instead of decreasing it. This slows down the process due to time wasted in adjustments. AI cannot produce long and coherent texts and does not replace the intelligence, reading of the world and sensory abilities of the screenwriter, believes Verde.

The truth is that there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the use of AI in the audiovisual field, especially because the application possibilities are endless. Aside from compromising artistic visions, one of the biggest fears about technological advancements is job loss. Eline Van der Velden, however, does not believe it.

—I understand fear perfectly. The reason I started working with AI was precisely this fear. I thought, “well, I understand this better, if this is going to end up taking my job.” And then I realized that it was actually quite difficult to replace humans. We still need to tell a real story. AI does nothing without humans, emphasizes the producer. — As I worked more and more in this field, I noticed that we were hiring more and more people.

Van der Velden recalls that he started using ChatGPT to summarize episodes of his company’s series, Particle 6. Three years ago, he nicknamed the tool “bad intern” because it made a lot of mistakes and couldn’t handle more elaborate requests. Today, thanks to generative video AI tools, you can create scenes with special effects that would have been very expensive before.