Nicolas Cage sends a warning to young actors that AI ‘wants to take your instrument’

Nicolas Cage has urged young actors to resist the pressure from employers to use artificial intelligence (AI) to alter their performances.

The 60-year-old Longlegs actor was giving a speech at the Newport Beach Film Festival on Sunday (20 October) when he spoke about the threats AI poses towards the film industry.

“Film performance, to me, is very much a handmade, organic, from-scratch process,” he began. “It’s from the heart, it’s from the imagination, it’s from thoughts and detail and thinking and honing and preparing.”

Cage then spoke about “a new technology in town”, which he has only recently come up against in the 42nd year of his career.

“It’s a technology that I didn’t have to contend with for 42 years until recently. But these 10 young actors, this generation, most certainly will be, and they are calling it EBDR.”

EBDR is a type of generative AI created through using the performer’s physical participation, meaning actors work fewer days and studios save money on costs. It is just one of two digital replicas permitted by the SAG-AFTRA deal negotiated with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, after the conclusion of the Hollywood strikes in 2023.

Under the terms, EBDR will allow studios to save money and time, but actors will still be paid for EBDR days. However, there are varying rules for different types of performers depending on their salaries – and those with higher ones are assumed to be able to negotiate their own terms.

“This technology wants to take your instrument. We are the instruments as film actors. We are not hiding behind guitars and drums,” said Cage.

The Face/Off star warned younger actors that the studios want to use EBDR to “change your face after you’ve already shot at in – they can change your voice, they can change your line deliveries, they can change your body language, they can change your performance”.

He then urged actors to turn down any contracts with EBDR terms, remarking that his cameo in 2023’s The Flash was an example of EBDR.

“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,” he concluded. “Protect your instrument.”

Earlier this year, Cage spoke about his unease at the prospect of AI being used to replicate his likeness after his death.

“They have to put me in a computer and match my eye colour and change – I don’t know,” Cage told author Susan Orlean in the New Yorker. “They’re just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital AI. God, I hope not AI. I’m terrified of that. I’ve been very vocal about it.”

“It is [really scary]. And it makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up?” he continued.

“Is it going to be replaced? Is it going to be transmogrified? Where’s the heartbeat going to be? I mean, what are you going to do with my body and my face when I’m dead? I don’t want you to do anything with it!”