Steven Spielberg
Filmmaker
The most commercially successful director in film history — Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List. Says the soul “cannot be created by any algorithm,” that machine-written stories terrify him, and that AI must never be “the final word on anything creative.”
In his words
I think the soul is unimaginable and ineffable. And it cannot be created by any algorithm.
And to lose that because books and movies, and music is being written by machines that we created, and now we’re letting them run with? That terrifies me.
Use AI as a tool, but do not use AI as the final word on anything creative.
Biography
Steven Spielberg (born 1946) is the defining American filmmaker of the modern era: Jaws invented the summer blockbuster, E.T. and Jurassic Park redrew the limits of popular cinema, and Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan won him two Best Director Oscars. He is also, notably, no technophobe — Jurassic Park pioneered CGI, and in 2001 he directed A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a film about a machine child who longs to be human.
“We’re on the menu”
Asked about generative AI on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in March 2023, Spielberg drew a hard metaphysical line: the soul, he said, is “unimaginable and ineffable” and cannot be created by any algorithm — and the prospect of books, movies, and music written by machines “terrifies me.” He reached for a Twilight Zone allusion to describe where it leads: “It will be ‘To Serve Man.’ It’ll turn out to be a cookbook — and we’re on the menu.” He added that he loves digital art when a human uses the tools to express themselves; his objection is to the machine as author.
He has kept refining the line since. On Michelle Obama’s IMO podcast in 2026 he allowed AI a logistical role — “If AI wants to help me find locations, that’s great” — while forbidding it any creative authority: “don’t tell me I don’t have the right antagonist in this story, don’t tell me how to write my dialogue, don’t tell me where the camera has to go.” Speaking to Deadline in May 2026 he said he was still withholding final judgment on the technology, but was “not willing to substitute” an AI for a human creative role: “Where I don’t love AI is where it takes a position, or there’s an empty chair at a writer’s table.”
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/steven-spielberg