Ashton Kutcher Getting Pummeled for Suggesting A.I. Should Replace Creatives

Give Ashton Kutcher credit for making headlines twice today — first for extolling the virtues of dumping film and video crews in favor of A.I. movie generation, then again when the creative community came after him with pitchforks. 

Why all the commotion? 

It started during Kutcher’s recent conversation with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, according to Variety. “Why would you go out and shoot an establishing shot of a house in a television show when you could just create the establishing shot for $100? To go out and shoot it would cost you thousands of dollars,” Kutcher said. “Action scenes of me jumping off of this building, you don’t have to have a stunt person go do it, you could just go do it (with A.I.).”

Translation: Why pay directors, cinematographers, lighting experts, grips, gaffers, production assistants, stunt people and other employees of the film industry when your laptop can puke out a sterile facsimile of the same thing? Sure, it might cost hundreds of jobs but at least it’s cheap and soulless. 

Deadline reported Hollywood’s rank-and-file weren’t thrilled with Kutcher’s take on his industry’s future. One-time Rick and Morty writer Caitie Delaney roasted Kutcher for “cannibalizing your own industry because you played Steve Jobs in an inferior movie and think you’re a tech genius now.”

“When you take ANY humans off of a collaborative and creative pursuit you literally lose the humanity,” she posted on X. “A hollow, dumbass, pointless shell. TV will have the same artistic merit as dish soap.”

Others inside and outside of the industry jumped into the fray.

Sounds like the only way Kutcher might be welcome on another film set is if he issues a sincere apology. Effective mea culpas can be hard to craft, but Kutcher probably knows a handy tool in case he gets writer’s block.