Nicolas Cage Warns Actors That AI 'Wants to Take Your Instrument'

By Stephen Graves

“Longlegs” star Nicolas Cage took aim at the use of AI and “employment-based digital replicas” (EBDR) to manipulate actors’ performances, according to film industry trade publication Deadline.

Speaking at the 25th Newport Beach Film Festival, Cage described EBDR as “a new technology in town,” warning up-and-coming young actors that the technology “wants to take your instrument.” Cage said, “We are the instruments as film actors. We are not hiding behind guitars and drums.”

Under a 2023 agreement struck between actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, studios are permitted to create two types of “digital replicas” of real actors, which can involve the use of generative AI.

Employment based digital replicas (EBDRs) are those made with the actor’s participation, such as Harrison Ford’s “de-aged” Indiana Jones in 2023’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”

Independently created digital replicas (ICDRs) are those made without the direct involvement of the original actor, and are often created using archival footage, such as Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” film “The Rise of Skywalker.”

“The studios want this so that they can change your face after you’ve already shot it,” Cage said, adding that, “They can change your face, they can change your voice, they can change your line deliveries, they can change your body language, they can change your performance.”

He pointed to his cameo appearance as Superman in 2023’s “The Flash” as an example of EBDR. In a 2023 interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Cage said that his performance in the film had been altered, and was “not what I did.”

In the recording session, he said, he’d played the role as “bearing witness [to] the end of a universe,” whereas in the finished film, his Superman was depicted fighting a giant spider.

AI, he said, is “a nightmare to me.” He added: “It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence.”

Speaking at the Newport Beach Film Festival, Cage said, “I’m asking you, if you’re approached by a studio to sign a contract, permitting them to use EBDR on your performance, I want you to consider what I am calling MVMFMBMI: my voice, my face, my body, my imagination — my performance, in response."

Although SAG-AFTRA reached an agreement with motion picture producers in 2023 over the use of generative AI in film productions, the union is currently striking over the use of artificial intelligence in video game productions.

SAG-AFTRA Chief Contract Officer Ray Rodriguez told Decrypt in August 2024 that “there are multiple open issues on the subject of AI” in the video game industry, with sticking points including the extent to which protections apply to on-camera performers as well as voice artists.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.

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