{"id":37405,"topic":"ai","source":"The Guardian","title":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts - The Guardian","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","url_hash":"bcc6fc89694f2d7aa85951e0f37029dcea4a2579","author":"","summary":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts The Guardian","content":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.\nSpeaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’”\nAdoption of such tools, continued Lucas, is an inevitability. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”\nLucas is not the only director of a Star Wars film to have come out in favour of AI. The British film-maker Gareth Edwards, who made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as well as, most recently, Jurassic World Rebirth, said generative AI “is a fucking genius at helping you”.\nHowever there are high-profile holdouts, including The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan, who recently commented: “I’ve never seen a technology that’s been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors … that the public has so thoroughly rejected. Young people in particular, they coined this term ‘AI slop’ … There’s a sort of disdain for things AI.”\nMeanwhile Steven Soderbergh, whose documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview includes AI-generated sequences, has expressed ambivalence. “I don’t think it’s the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now, we all may be going, ‘That was a fun phase.’”\nAs well as AI, Lucas also told the website his thoughts on the industry’s use of audience testing and focus groups. “I don’t like focus groups,” he said. “The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a film-maker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie … Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie.”","image_url":"https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e282eec9675257252fcdf9b3922b2512160b7cc0/274_0_3885_3108/master/3885.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=e78ec7773f6ecf6d6c0fb1f7ffa35981","lang":"en","published_at":"2026-07-15T12:30:00+00:00","fetched_at":"2026-07-15T13:15:05+00:00","status":"read","starred":0,"extract_state":"ok","summary_auto":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at.","cluster_id":null,"extract_retries":0,"extract_error":null,"contract_version":"news_item.v1","format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1","dedup_url":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434,"usable_text_length":2210,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434}},"news_item":{"id":37405,"canonical_url":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","source_url":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","title":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts - The Guardian","source_name":"The Guardian","author":null,"published_at":"2026-07-15T12:30:00+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"rss_summary":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts The Guardian","full_text":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.\nSpeaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’”\nAdoption of such tools, continued Lucas, is an inevitability. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”\nLucas is not the only director of a Star Wars film to have come out in favour of AI. The British film-maker Gareth Edwards, who made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as well as, most recently, Jurassic World Rebirth, said generative AI “is a fucking genius at helping you”.\nHowever there are high-profile holdouts, including The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan, who recently commented: “I’ve never seen a technology that’s been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors … that the public has so thoroughly rejected. Young people in particular, they coined this term ‘AI slop’ … There’s a sort of disdain for things AI.”\nMeanwhile Steven Soderbergh, whose documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview includes AI-generated sequences, has expressed ambivalence. “I don’t think it’s the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now, we all may be going, ‘That was a fun phase.’”\nAs well as AI, Lucas also told the website his thoughts on the industry’s use of audience testing and focus groups. “I don’t like focus groups,” he said. “The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a film-maker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie … Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie.”","excerpt":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at.","extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434,"usable_text_length":2210,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434}}},"display_formats":["compact","card","full","digest_section","json"]},"daily_stack_record":{"title":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts - The Guardian","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","summary":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at.","source":"The Guardian","date":"2026-07-15T12:30:00+00:00","content":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.\nSpeaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’”\nAdoption of such tools, continued Lucas, is an inevitability. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”\nLucas is not the only director of a Star Wars film to have come out in favour of AI. The British film-maker Gareth Edwards, who made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as well as, most recently, Jurassic World Rebirth, said generative AI “is a fucking genius at helping you”.\nHowever there are high-profile holdouts, including The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan, who recently commented: “I’ve never seen a technology that’s been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors … that the public has so thoroughly rejected. Young people in particular, they coined this term ‘AI slop’ … There’s a sort of disdain for things AI.”\nMeanwhile Steven Soderbergh, whose documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview includes AI-generated sequences, has expressed ambivalence. “I don’t think it’s the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now, we all may be going, ‘That was a fun phase.’”\nAs well as AI, Lucas also told the website his thoughts on the industry’s use of audience testing and focus groups. “I don’t like focus groups,” he said. “The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a film-maker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie … Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie.”","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434,"usable_text_length":2210,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434}},"tags":[]},"fallback_formats":["markdown","json","html"],"actions":{"read":"/item/37405","export_markdown":"/api/items/37405/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/37405/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts"},"formats":{"full":{"id":37405,"title":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts - The Guardian","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","source":"The Guardian","author":null,"published_at":"2026-07-15T12:30:00+00:00","locale":"en","topic":"ai","tags":[],"excerpt":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at.","full_text":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.\nSpeaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’”\nAdoption of such tools, continued Lucas, is an inevitability. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”\nLucas is not the only director of a Star Wars film to have come out in favour of AI. The British film-maker Gareth Edwards, who made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as well as, most recently, Jurassic World Rebirth, said generative AI “is a fucking genius at helping you”.\nHowever there are high-profile holdouts, including The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan, who recently commented: “I’ve never seen a technology that’s been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors … that the public has so thoroughly rejected. Young people in particular, they coined this term ‘AI slop’ … There’s a sort of disdain for things AI.”\nMeanwhile Steven Soderbergh, whose documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview includes AI-generated sequences, has expressed ambivalence. “I don’t think it’s the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now, we all may be going, ‘That was a fun phase.’”\nAs well as AI, Lucas also told the website his thoughts on the industry’s use of audience testing and focus groups. “I don’t like focus groups,” he said. “The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a film-maker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie … Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie.”","reading_time_min":2,"extraction":{"state":"ok","confidence":0.9,"error":null,"explanation":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434,"usable_text_length":2210,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434}}},"quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434,"usable_text_length":2210,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434}},"actions":{"read":"/item/37405","export_markdown":"/api/items/37405/export?format=markdown","export_json":"/api/items/37405/export?format=json","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts"}},"digest":{"id":37405,"title":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts - The Guardian","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","source":"The Guardian","topic":"ai","published_at":"2026-07-15T12:30:00+00:00","excerpt":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make…","quality_bucket":"high","quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","reading_time_min":2,"cluster_id":null},"card":{"display_title":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts - The Guardian","subtitle":"The Guardian · 2026-07-15","summary":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said:…","badges":["quality:high"],"links":{"read":"/item/37405","original":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","diagnose":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts"},"quality_warning":null},"export":{"title":"George Lucas likens AI sceptics to luddites clinging to horses and carts - The Guardian","url":"https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","summary":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking. Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at.","source":"The Guardian","date":"2026-07-15T12:30:00+00:00","content":"Star Wars director George Lucas has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.\nSpeaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”\nResistance to the new technology, he continued, is “very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’”\nAdoption of such tools, continued Lucas, is an inevitability. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”\nLucas is not the only director of a Star Wars film to have come out in favour of AI. The British film-maker Gareth Edwards, who made Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as well as, most recently, Jurassic World Rebirth, said generative AI “is a fucking genius at helping you”.\nHowever there are high-profile holdouts, including The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan, who recently commented: “I’ve never seen a technology that’s been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors … that the public has so thoroughly rejected. Young people in particular, they coined this term ‘AI slop’ … There’s a sort of disdain for things AI.”\nMeanwhile Steven Soderbergh, whose documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview includes AI-generated sequences, has expressed ambivalence. “I don’t think it’s the solution to everything, and I don’t think it’s the death of everything. We’re in the very early stages. Five years from now, we all may be going, ‘That was a fun phase.’”\nAs well as AI, Lucas also told the website his thoughts on the industry’s use of audience testing and focus groups. “I don’t like focus groups,” he said. “The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a film-maker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie … Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie.”","confidence":0.9,"diagnostics_url":"/api/diagnose?url=https%3A//www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/15/george-lucas-likens-ai-sceptics-to-luddites-clinging-to-horses-and-carts","quality_bucket":"high","failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"quality_reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","quality_profile":{"profile_version":"extraction_quality.v2","bucket":"high","confidence":0.9,"failure_kind":"none","retryable":false,"retry_after_attempts":0,"reason":"High confidence: full text extraction produced 2210 characters.","operator_guidance":{"severity":"ok","recommended_action":"trust_full_text","next_step":"Use the extracted full text as the primary article source.","operator_label":"Ready","can_retry":false,"can_use_summary":false,"diagnostics_required":false},"content_depth":{"contract_version":"content_depth.v1","category":"full_text","label":"Full text","has_full_text":true,"has_summary":true,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434,"usable_text_length":2210,"source_field":"content"},"legacy_collapsed":false,"signals":{"extract_state":"ok","extract_error":null,"extract_retries":0,"content_length":2210,"summary_length":434}},"tags":[],"format_contract_version":"news_item_formats.v1"}}}