Tom Cruise Secretly Warned Movie Studios About AI Use

He's got some history with AI, folks.

Risky Business

Entertainment workers' anti-AI campaign can apparently count "Mission: Impossible" star Tom Cruise among its advocates.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cruise was brought in via Zoom to studio negotiations last month between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to discuss concerns about the use of AI in cinema.

While Cruise's precise words haven't been reported, context clues suggest that he was joining the union's anti-AI push. For one, THR reports that the guild only invites actors to negotiations when their point of view has been vetted and found helpful. And his many controversies notwithstanding, Cruise does have a proletarian bent; his other notable contribution to the discussion, per the reporting, was to advocate for the rights of stunt performers.

The Last SamurAI

As THR notes, the "Top Gun" star is the biggest celebrity to join the negotiations amid the massive and publicity-grabbing SAG-AFTRA strike, where the rights of actors during the rise of AI have emerged as a key issue. AI's impact on Hollywood extends far beyond acting talent as well, with the Writers Guild also on strike while advocating for their rights in the face of generative AI tech.

It's also worth noting that Cruise has had some of the highest-visibility exposure to AI tech in Hollywood, since he was infamously deepfaked on TikTok a few years ago in a series of shorts that went mega-viral for their eerie realism. Also perhaps relevant? The latest installment of his decades-long "Mission: Impossible" franchise, released this month, is about a horrific future AI. So although Cruise is notoriously media-shy, it seems plausible that he's pretty fired up about the AI issue.

More on the WGA/SAG AI strike: Studios Want to Replace Background Actors With AI After Paying Them for Only One Day