“Avatar: Fire and Ash,” the third chapter in James Cameron’s epic science fiction franchise, arrived in theaters a few days ago after one of the longest and most complex production cycles in modern Hollywood. Shot largely alongside “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the picture once again pushes visual effects technology to its limits, continuing Cameron’s decades-long commitment to innovation at an enormous financial and creative scale.
With a reported budget north of $400 million and years spent developing new performance-capture techniques, the film exemplifies both the ambition and the burden of Cameron’s meticulous approach. Now, as two more sequels remain on the horizon, the director has hinted at a possible way to speed things up.
James Cameron on Ethical AI and the Future of ‘Avatar’
Speaking on Q with Tom Power, James Cameron was candid about the personal and practical pressures shaping the future of the “Avatar” franchise. Now 71, the filmmaker admitted he doesn’t want to repeat the long production cycles that defined the earlier sequels, saying, “I don’t wanna spend another [eight] years on two more Avatar films in my life,” adding that finding ways to work faster would also “make it cheaper.”
Cameron said generative AI could potentially be part of that solution, but only under strict ethical boundaries. “Now, does generative AI play a role in that? It may,” he said, before drawing a firm line on what that would mean in practice. “As long as we stay within the ethical boundaries of never replacing the actors, never replacing the artists … never replacing me as a director, or the writers.”
He acknowledged that this vision is far from easy to achieve with today’s technology. According to Cameron, existing generative AI systems simply aren’t built to integrate with high-end visual effects pipelines. “That’s a bit of a tall order right now,” he explained, noting that these tools would likely need to be custom-built to work within the established workflows of major film productions.
Cameron also criticized the priorities of major tech companies currently driving AI development. “The big companies that are pushing all this stuff are just interested in business-to-business models,” he said, citing applications like medical diagnostics or consumer novelty tools. For Avatar-level filmmaking, Cameron made it clear that “they’re not professional tools for entertainment,” and any meaningful use of AI would require creating something entirely new from the ground up.