George Takei
Actor and Activist
Star Trek actor and digital-rights activist who treats AI as a tool answerable to human judgment — he launched his own AI chatbot — while insisting performers must consent before their likeness is cloned.
In his words
AI can never be the enemy. It’s merely a tool for which human judgment determines the outcome.
Biography
George Takei (born 1937) played Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek and became, in his eighties, one of the most-followed personalities on social media and a tireless activist for civil rights and privacy. His worldview was forged early: as a child he and his family were imprisoned in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II, an experience he returns to when warning about fear and power.
A tool, not an enemy
Takei has been unusually sanguine about AI itself. He was an early adopter — around Star Trek’s 50th anniversary he launched his own AI chatbot — and in a 2021 Forbes interview he rejected the doomer framing, arguing the real danger lies in human nature rather than in the machine.
We have the potential to become our own worst enemy.
That optimism has a hard edge on consent. Takei stood with fellow performers during the industry’s reckoning over digital replicas, and his position is that actors must control whether their face and voice are cloned — a distinction between AI as a creative instrument and AI as a way to appropriate a person without permission.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/george-takei