Activists, filmmakers and actors
It began with a dire warning — and a call to arms. In a 2025 panel discussion, Daniel Kwan, one half of the directorial tandem behind Everything Everywhere All at Once, set the existential stakes. “We have to understand that AI is fundamentally incompatible with our institutions,” said Kwan, who called on studios, unions, agencies — “basically everyone” — to form “a unified front against the tech industry.” In February, he co-founded Creators Coalition on AI, alongside actors and prominent AI activists Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natasha Lyonne, to regulate the new technology and advocate for artists’ rights. Hollywood creatives were quick to voice their support, including Cate Blanchett, Rian Johnson, Phil Lord, Kristen Stewart and Taika Waititi. The CCAI says it’s not resisting the use of AI but rather its misuse. Lyonne herself, acknowledging the inevitability of the tech, co-founded AI company Asteria and has announced plans to direct an AI-assisted feature film, Uncanny Valley. Gordon-Levitt, for his part, has become the organization’s most public spokesperson (the U.N. appointed him as its first global advocate for human-centric digital governance). “I actually think this technology has the potential to be genuinely good for human creativity, but we’ll need to come together and build robust systems for ongoing consent, compensation, controls and transparency around AI training data,” he tells THR. “[But] I fear that most gen AI won’t be used as a tool by human creators at all. Mostly, it’ll be used [by big tech companies] for purely algorithmic personalization … to generate a whole new video just for you. Everyone will have their own unique viewing experience. Or, put another way, every user will be perfectly siloed, relating to no one, connected to nothing but the system alone.”
