Who is surprised by this?
He was making slop versions of his own movies before AI.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Who is surprised by this?
He was making slop versions of his own movies before AI.
Exactly, the guy has done shit for decades!
Continuing that unbroken streak of bad artistic decisions towards an inevitable Star Wars Special 50th Anniversary Slop Edition reissue.
“If you want AI that tells you when something is fake and where it came from, AI can do that,” he says. “Humans can’t, we’re not that smart.
dead-eyed stare in librarian
How could that even be true since it was humans thay trained ai. What a dumb statement ahh
I hate AI as much as the next person but the Pandora's box is open. A lot of people don't want to admit it but AI, despite its current limitations, does have potential. Many people say that AI hit its limit and peak but i would not be very dismissive of it yet. Plenty of technologies were hindered by the limitations of their time but gradually overcame those. It took renewable energy at least fifty years to overcome the storage problem, their respective technical limits (solar panels for example did not have great photovoltaic system) and upfront cost before it became more commercially viable.
As much as I also just think AI is just going to make lazy people lazier, and we’ve already seen some effects regarding our ability to problem solve, the real issue is that none of the wonderful utopian AI stuff is going to come true at the rate we’re going. I don’t guve a fat flying fuck how good or bad AI is, I care that it’s being used to spy on us, make decisions no human will ever review, and has already led to mass layoffs without any kind of safety net for those people. I care that it’s raping the environment so some sentient dick-cheese can get worse results than a near-zero effort search would give them. Increased productivity has yet to give anyone more free time, they just axe someone else and overwork whoever’s left.
We are NOT ready for AI at ANY level. It’s a weapon being used against the working class. If you think the issue is with its quality then you need to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and pay some goddamn attention.
This should really be a critique of capitalism. The problem is that the plutocracy is very good at using your anger and rage against you.
Ppl are mad ai is stealint jobs, im mad it isnt leading to ubi
The issue is, though, is that AI is a force multiplier, and it's being used as a force multiplier for evil.
It is a critique against capitalism. God, reading comprehension is bad these days, huh?
Also, I still hate AI. As someone else once said “if it’s not worth your effort to write it, it’s not worth my effort to read it.”
Long term the value of human labor under capitalism will move towards zero. This is inevitable. Under socialism, AI could be used to reduce working hours or improve economic planning.
You're just angry. And instead of suggesting something a politician actually could use as a demand or as a policy, you're just ranting. And for them that is perfect to exploit.
I’m literally saying this. It’s like, the majority of my first comment and I wasn’t hiding it. Bro, learn to read.
Being angry is still helpful because many of us know what the fucking problems are and just like to see that we aren’t alone in that.
I think the primary gripe with AI is less about having no potential, but about the specific potential for evil being leveraged heavily while "visionaries" lie about or dismiss the (current and foreseeable future) limits for clout and profit.
To use your comparison, CEOs selling solar panels are responding to scepticism about the stability of that supply and its elasticity to fluctuating power demand with vague promises of developing more advanced cells that can operate with less light and throttle the generated power during ebbs in demand. They buy land to install more solar panels, then lobby for the deactivation of other, flexible power sources that could supplement their supply until they can finally start charging more in times of high demand.
They do so because the alternative would be admitting that the product they're selling isn't ready for the market they're trying to enter (or at least not at the scale they're aiming for) and that the solution to their issues requires different technologies which have not yet been developed. They can't admit that because it would upset the investors that trusted their vision. As a famous adage suggests, they probably can't even understand that limit, since their salary depends on not understanding it.
In the same vein, the current CEOs fail (or refuse?) to acknowledge that the generative models today have a fundamental limitation with understanding the semantics behind certain patterns. One infamous phenomenon would be AI hands: We know what a hand is and how it works; a generator can only vaguely imitate the patterns. It doesn't know "hand" or "finger", so it just generates some assembly that vaguely fits its training material.
If we consider the broader and ill-defined field of AI, I can believe that some form of semantic modelling technology could provide a way to connect tokens with abstract concepts and enable a type of reasoning that pure token predictors are incapable of. But we first need to acknowledge that limit, and on that front, we're competing against tech-bros that would rather believe than know and against grifters that would rather sell snake oil than teach medicine.
To use your comparison, CEOs selling solar panels are responding to scepticism about the stability of that supply and its elasticity to fluctuating power demand with vague promises of developing more advanced cells that can operate with less light and throttle the generated power during ebbs in demand. They buy land to install more solar panels, then lobby for the deactivation of other, flexible power sources that could supplement their supply until they can finally start charging more in times of high demand.
To be honest, it seems to me that are not the CEOs of solar panel companies that belive that solar panel (and other renewable sources) are a drop in replacement for more traditional sources. This idea comes from a certain area of the political spectrum and groups that do not understand even the basic math behind the substitution of a gas turbine with a field of solar panels.
Then it is true, CEOs are probably overselling, like everyone that has to sell something. And obviously they need to say that the technology will improve otherwise in the current economy they will be ignored and investment would go to other things.
To be honest, it seems to me that are not the CEOs of solar panel companies that belive that solar panel (and other renewable sources) are a drop in replacement for more traditional sources.
Oh no, I definitely agree with you there. The CEOs only care whether there is money to be made and will lie and cheat if they think they can get away with it.
I disagree with the "Pandora's box is open" angle because my beef isn't with the technology, but how it's being used in practice. It's a socioeconomic problem, but a technological one.
Cory Doctorow articulates it much better than I can^[1]:
"Now, if AI could do your job, this would still be a problem. We'd have to figure out what to do with all these technologically unemployed people.
But AI can't do your job. It can help you do your job, but that doesn't mean it's going to save anyone money. Take radiology: there's some evidence that AIs can sometimes identify solid-mass tumors that some radiologists miss, and look, I've got cancer. Thankfully, it's very treatable, but I've got an interest in radiology being as reliable and accurate as possible.
If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: "Hey folks, here's the deal. Today, you're processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we're going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you've missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you're only processing 98 x-rays per day. That's fine, we just care about finding all those tumors."
If that's what they said, I'd be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market's bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists' job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it's catastrophically wrong.
"And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist's fault, because they are the 'human in the loop.' It's their signature on the diagnosis."
This is a reverse centaur, and it's a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it's what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink." The radiologist's job isn't really to oversee the AI's work, it's to take the blame for the AI's mistakes."
Even with the technological limitations that AI faces at the moment, we could be doing so much more with it. I love this radiography example because so many of us have experienced someone in our life getting cancer. AI is absolutely capable of improving the rate at which we are detecting cancer at an early stage, which would absolutely save lives. Instead what we're getting is that it is being used as an excuse to heap more work onto doctors and radiographers, worsening the situation for everyone.
I do agree with the broad strokes of what you're saying, because absolutely it does take time for any new technology to integrate itself into society and become useful. However, I don't believe that AI in its current form is capable of becoming commercially viable (and by "in its current form", I am talking about a paradigm that demands excessive building of super resource intensive datacentres)
Edit: forgot to add the citation [1]: https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/
Many people say that AI hit its limit and peak
Oh probably not, but it is really really expensive to run. If they continue on with unlimited funding, they can eventually replace mid to upper level experts in most fields.
We've likely hit the limit for the current LLM approach. Training/Pruning/Distilling can't get us much further on their own, so now we're strapping on code, having it plan, parallel execute, test. Tokens are likely 10x less expensive on the market than they cost to generate. Every advance we make now is by making each request fire off many more requests. Improvements are getting exponentially expensive.
We'll have to slow because financially * it's not profitable. Maybe hardware will catch back up. Maybe they'll find ways to make it more efficient. Maybe we'll figure out a more elegant way to do the math for the weights. We just can't keep making it more deeply complicated because it's not cost/energy/time effective
edit: deleted a word
Flukey dilettante regards stochastic parrot as unfathomable prodigy
Read all about it
This reads like one of those mass-delete gibberish Reddit comments, lol
It's not every day you get to use a word like dilettante, so I figured I'd make a salad
Its weird that he really was on the forefront once because he did physical effects with interesting camera shots. it felt new and different.
AI is not going to give you that, it will suck. CGI sucks already too.
Oh well not like he is relevant. A new hope was at least interesting, but its been nothing after that anyways.
Not going to get into the AI debate; I will agree that BAD CGI sucks; there’s so much CGI you never even notice and without it the scenes would be horrible. The main reason “CGI sucks” is because of the shift to go with the lowest bidder who’s then forced to work under horrific timelines and unable to actually do good work. CGI itself doesn’t suck, but it absolutely can when done by a low bidder in 1/4 of the time it needs.
Only because he had to. As soon as it was possible he went cg and blue screens.
I have always thought ai was like the Jar Jar Binks of computer programs.
Kokaku’s website is blocking my VPN connection. Here’s the text of the article.
George Lucas Goes To The Dark Side, Says AI Is ‘The Future’
By Kenneth Shepard Published July 14, 2026
The Star Wars creator compares not using AI to riding a horse in the face of cars
I would like to think that not every prestigious filmmaker is vulnerable to the AI propaganda, but it feels like we’re getting new stories of someone partnering with or advocating for the use of artificial intelligence as the future of cinematic storytelling every day. The newest addition to the list? Mr. Star Wars himself, George Lucas, and man is his reasoning a bummer.
In an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas discussed his career and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, opening this fall in L.A., which will be showcasing decades of human-made art and spotlighting, as its website calls it, “stories and people who tell them.” In the lengthy interview, Lucas shares some meaningful insights into filmmaking, discusses his collaborations with people like Indiana Jones director Steven Spielberg, and even offers some pithy observations about the pitfalls of testing films with focus groups and whether or not the average viewer is actually in touch with what they like about movies.
“If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a filmmaker I want to find out why,” he says. “But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie. Of course, now they go crazy with that. Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie. You make a movie by finding someone that knows how to make movies, that has a story to tell and is passionate about it.”
Jarringly, this advocacy for human-led storytelling is followed by claims that AI is “the future,” and Lucas compares not using the new technology to relying on antiquated transportation in the face of cars.
“Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies,” he tells A Rabbit’s Foot. “It’s very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’ There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”
Though he acknowledged the risks of using the plagiarism machine when A Rabbit’s Foot questioned him further, he doubled down by highlighting other benefits he believes AI will provide in the future.
“If you want AI that tells you when something is fake and where it came from, AI can do that,” he says. “Humans can’t, we’re not that smart. The whole idea is you’re a human being, you’re responsible for what you say and what you do, and if you’re doing something that’s illegal you should be punished for that. Whatever you do, you should be recognized. It’s just like real life.”
There’s a scene in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back where Luke Skywalker is training alongside Yoda and learning the ins and outs of being a Jedi, and he asks if the dark side of the Force is stronger than the light side. Yoda replies that it’s not, but that many fall to it because it is “quicker, easier, more seductive.” That movie was released 46 years ago, but it is certainly illustrative of the logic Lucas is using here.
He advocates for the importance of human-made art, but then argues that using technology that is notorious for stealing from humans and whose results generally look like shit compared to work made by hand would make the filmmaking process “easier.” It’s “the future” and there’s “nothing you can do about it”? It’s contradictory to believe both that it’s the human spirit that makes great films and also that a technology that’s being used to remove the human element from the process is the future of making movies. If that makes me naive and means I’m fighting against the inevitable, then I will go down swinging.
Old Man Succumbs to Chatbot Flattery, volume 25841.
But also, Lucas was always exchanted by cgi, even when it looked way worse than practical effects.
Guy with famously bad takes has bad take.
"Goes to the Dark Side"
Someone never saw the rerelease of the original series.
Lucas' best work was under an editor, whenever he got the full reigns, the product suffered.
He became irrelevant the moment he sold the Star Wars franchise to Disney, and it's all been downhill from there (both for him and the franchise). Fuck him.
yeah I'm not surprised, I watched the prequels. This guy was a legend in the 70s, that is like 50 years ago.
He hasn't done anything great since co-writing Willow 40 years ago. Go to his IMDB, he's lived out of star wars nostalgia since then, and all of them after the initial trilogy was a downgrade.
i mean, he was there all along. he pioneered the all green screen wave of automation in movies. the abuse of green screen was the slop before ai was around. to him it’s just cutting out all the vestiges of imperfection still greasing the machine
Classic George L, I wouldn't have expected any more from him
Well yeah, he’s a billionaire, of course he looks after his own class’s interests.
Instead of interviewing a rich, famous, busy person, wouldn't it be easier to ask an AI to pretend to be that person, and interview the AI?
Or even to ask the AI to just write both parts of the interview itself? Wouldn't that just be helping interviewers get the stories they want to share out into the world?
Frank Herbert wasn't around to tell him how to think about it, I guess.
common George Lucas L
Of course he did. He loves updating his classics every time some "new technology" comes along to let his freak-flag fly.
We'll be seeing a re-re-re-re-release of A New Hope shortly where he uses an AI generated Boba Fett and Solo giving them a scene or two to develop a backstory.
The guy that essentially added lasers to Japanese movies and somehow became a multi-billionaire is a fan of stealing other's work with minimal effort and reusing it without permission?
I'm shocked. Shocked I say.