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.
In their words
There are some people that I have absolute love and respect for that refuse to engage with it. That’s their privilege. But I’m not built that way.
You show me a new tool, I want to get my hands on it and see what’s going on.
Biography
Steven Soderbergh (born 1963) broke through in 1989 with his debut feature Sex, Lies, and Videotape, winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes at twenty-six and helping ignite the 1990s independent film movement. He went on to win the Academy Award for Best Director for Traffic and to direct the wildly successful Ocean’s trilogy, moving fluidly between studio spectacle and lean, formally daring experiments.
More than almost any major director, Soderbergh is defined by his appetite for new tools. He routinely serves as his own cinematographer and editor, was an early adopter of digital cameras, and shot entire features on the iPhone. That instinct extends to generative AI: he regards refusing to engage with a new technology as a legitimate personal choice, but not one that suits how he works.
His stance is less manifesto than temperament. Where others draw lines, Soderbergh reaches for the new device to see what it does — a curiosity that has produced some of his most interesting work and that he now points squarely at AI.
Where they stand in the war
The opposition
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/steven-soderbergh