History repeats itself
The battle over AI, collected in one place.
battlelines.ai is a living archive of the people and organizations shaping the debate over artificial intelligence — the champions and the critics, the visionaries and the gatekeepers.
- 18
- subjects
- 12
- pro-AI voices
- 6
- anti-AI voices
Martin Scorsese
Director
One of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, and a lifelong champion of film preservation. In 2026 he became an advisor to Black Forest Labs and spoke openly about using AI-generated storyboards in pre-production — framing AI as another tool for communicating a director’s vision, not a replacement for artists.
Steven Soderbergh
Director
Oscar-winning director and one of cinema’s most relentless technical experimenters, known for shooting and cutting his own films and embracing every new format from prosumer digital to the iPhone. He treats generative AI as just the latest tool worth getting his hands on.
Darren Aronofsky
Director
Academy Award-nominated director of Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, and The Whale, and one of the highest-profile filmmakers building AI into the craft. He founded the AI-focused studio Primordial Soup and partnered with Google DeepMind to develop AI-assisted projects.
Gareth Edwards
Director
British director of Rogue One, Godzilla, and The Creator who built his career making blockbuster-scale films with tiny crews and lean budgets. A visual-effects artist by training, he sees AI as a tool that could rank alongside the camera — and outdo CGI.
Andrea Iervolino
Film Producer
Italian-Canadian producer behind dozens of features and one of the film industry’s most outspoken AI advocates. He produced what he calls the first feature directed by an AI — a synthetic “director” named FellinAI — while insisting it complements rather than replaces traditional cinema.
Ricardo Cabello
Software Engineer
Creator of Three.js, the most widely used JavaScript library for 3D graphics on the web. Known online as Mr.doob, he has become an enthusiastic, hands-on demonstrator of what AI coding assistants can build — including a playable port of Quake to Three.js in about an hour.
James Cameron
Director
Director of The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar, and one of cinema’s great technological pioneers. In 2024 he joined the board of Stability AI, calling the convergence of generative AI and CGI “the next wave” — while arguing it should speed up and empower artists, not replace them.
The Russo Brothers
Directors
Anthony and Joe Russo, directors of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame and founders of the studio AGBO. Self-described technologists, they are among Hollywood’s most vocal AI optimists — predicting AI-generated, personalized films and defending its use in their own productions.
David Lynch
Director
The surrealist auteur behind Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and Mulholland Drive, whose dreamlike style gave us the word “Lynchian.” In one of his final interviews, months before his death in January 2025, he called AI “fantastic” and “incredible as a tool for creativity.”
Linus Torvalds
Software Engineer
Creator of the Linux kernel and Git, and arguably the most influential programmer alive. A famous skeptic of hype, he is nonetheless genuinely optimistic about AI as a developer tool — expecting it to catch bugs, smarten tooling, and earn a place in everyday coding.
James Gurney
Artist & Author
Painter and author best known for Dinotopia, his best-selling illustrated world of humans and intelligent dinosaurs. A traditional plein-air craftsman, he holds one of the most careful, balanced positions in the whole debate: genuinely inspired by what generative AI can do, yet clear-eyed and unflinching about its harms.
PewDiePie
YouTuber
The online handle of Felix Kjellberg, one of YouTube’s most-subscribed creators of all time. In 2025 he reinvented himself as an open-source AI tinkerer — building Odysseus, his own self-hosted AI workspace — and turned “owning your own AI” into a rallying cry against Big Tech.
Dana Terrace
Animator
Peabody Award-winning animator and creator of Disney Channel’s The Owl House who became one of animation’s most outspoken opponents of generative AI. In 2025 she urged fans to cancel Disney+ and pirate her own show in protest of the studio’s embrace of AI-generated content.
Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker
Oscar-winning director of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water, and Pinocchio, and one of cinema’s most beloved champions of handcrafted, human-made art. In 2025 he became one of Hollywood’s most quotable opponents of generative AI, saying he would “rather die” than use it.
Ronny Chieng
Comedian
Malaysian-born comedian, actor, and senior Daily Show correspondent. In his 2026 Harvard Class Day address he turned a furious, profane riff against generative AI into a rallying cry, telling the graduating class that destroying AI is the mission of their generation.
Tim Burton
Director
The gothic-whimsical auteur behind Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Batman. After seeing AI-generated versions of his own Disney character designs, he described the experience as something “sucking” from his soul — likening generative AI to a robot taking your humanity.
Kane Parsons
Director
Self-taught filmmaker who created the viral “Backrooms” horror series on YouTube as a teenager and is now directing its feature adaptation. A VFX prodigy, he is sharply critical of generative AI — saying he gets no creative enjoyment from it and would make it “disappear forever” if he could.
The Indie Game Awards
Awards Ceremony
An annual indie-focused awards show produced by the team behind Six One Indie. It enforces a blanket ban on generative AI — a policy that, at its December 2025 ceremony, led it to strip Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 of its Game of the Year win hours after handing it out.
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