‘Avatar’ Director James Cameron Joins Stability AI Board Of Directors, Says He Wants To Incorporate AI Into VFX Industry

It was only last year that film director James Cameron was speaking out in interviews against the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Now, Cameron, the director of films like Avatar, Titanic, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, has agreed to join the board of directors for the controversial tech company Stability AI, whose key generative model Stable Diffusion has been downloaded over 150 million times. The director is saying that he wants to find new ways of incorporating AI into the vfx industry.

Here’s what we know about Cameron’s involvement with Stability AI, which was announced on Tuesday:

• Stability AI believes that Cameron’s addition to its board is a “significant step forward” in the company’s “mission to transform visual media.” The company further added: “Cameron’s artist-centric perspective, paired with his business and technical acumen, will support Stability AI in continuing to unlock new opportunities to empower creators to tell stories in ways once unimaginable.”
• Cameron joins other newly-appointed board members, including Dana Settle, co-founder and managing partner of Greycroft; Colin Bryant, COO and general partner of Coatue Management; and Sean Parker, former president of Facebook, who serves as executive chairman.
• The financial terms of Cameron’s deal with Stability AI have not been revealed. Typically, board members are compensated with retainer fees and stock options, in addition to other perks.
• Prem Akkaraju, the CEO of Stability AI, is the previous CEO of Weta Digital, the lead visual effects studio for Cameron’s Avatar franchise. Akkaraju said in a statement:
  

  James Cameron lives in the future and waits for the rest of us to catch up; Stability AI’s mission is to transform visual media for the next century by giving creators a full stack AI pipeline to bring their ideas to life. We have an unmatched advantage to achieve this goal with a technological and creative visionary like James at the highest levels of our company. This is not only a monumental statement for Stability AI, but the AI industry overall. The next frontier in visual media will be forged by a true fusion of artist and technology, and Stability AI is leading the charge.

• Cameron, who also runs the production company Lightstorm, added:
  

  I’ve spent my career seeking out emerging technologies that push the very boundaries of what’s possible, all in the service of telling incredible stories. I was at the forefront of cgi over three decades ago, and I’ve stayed on the cutting edge since. Now, the intersection of generative AI and cgi image creation is the next wave. The convergence of these two totally different engines of creation will unlock new ways for artists to tell stories in ways we could have never imagined. Stability AI is poised to lead this transformation. I’m delighted to collaborate with Sean [Parker], Prem [Akkaraju], and the Stability AI team as they shape the future of all visual media.

  Cameron elaborated on this “intersection” between AI and cgi image creation in an interview with CNBC (watch below) in which he said “the next big leap forward is going to be to find a commonality, a common platform, between those two two fields, which are very, very different.”

• Cameron has previously expressed skepticism about the dangers of AI. Last year, he told CTV News, “I warned you guys in 1984, but you didn’t listen,” in reference to his film Terminator, adding that, “I think the weaponization of AI is the biggest danger.” In that same interview, he said that AI-generated writing would not replace human writers any time soon:
  

  I just don’t personally believe that a disembodied mind that’s just regurgitating what other embodied minds have said — about the life that they’ve had, about love, about lying, about fear, about mortality — and just put it all together into a word salad and then regurgitate it. I don’t believe that have something that’s going to move an audience.”

• Stability AI is among a number of companies that is being sued by visual artists in a class action lawsuit for using unauthorized copies of millions, if not billions, of copyrighted images to train its generative AI systems. The company’s co-founder and prior CEO Emad Mostaque resigned in March 2024, following questions about his ability to run the company.