Robert Downey Jr.

Robert Downey Jr. (born 1965) is an American actor whose casting as Tony Stark in Iron Man (2008) launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one of the great career comebacks in Hollywood history. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2024 for Oppenheimer.

“I intend to sue all future executives”

In October 2024, while starring on Broadway in McNeal — a play about a novelist who uses AI — Downey told the On With Kara Swisher podcast that he would never permit a digital replica of himself. He said he was confident current Marvel decision-makers would not recreate his Tony Stark with AI, but when Swisher countered that future executives surely would, he answered that he intends to sue them all “on spec,” adding that even after his death his law firm “will still be very active.”

The remark, half joke and all warning, traveled widely because it named the actual fault line: not today’s studio relationships but tomorrow’s, when the people who made the promises are gone and the scan remains. Downey’s position aligns with contract-based defenses taken by peers like Keanu Reeves, though he has framed his interest in AI’s broader questions — the subject of McNeal — as curiosity rather than blanket hostility.