At the Aspen Festival of Ideas during a Tuesday panel titled “Whose hands hold Hollywood’s future,” Jodie Foster joked that the 2025 film F1 seems as if it were produced by artificial intelligence, according to Variety.
The Oscar-winning actor said that when she watches a movie like F1 she thinks the film’s structure and dialogue are ‘‘exactly how they teach it in school,’’ and that the lines coming from actors’ mouths sound ‘‘just like something a computer would write if tasked with producing the most appropriate text for each situation.’’
Foster added she did not mean the remark as a put-down, then went on to describe AI as a major step in the transformation of the film industry. She noted that AI is already being used to replace people: studios, for example, often save money by multiplying background performers with AI rather than hiring more extras.
‘‘We are eliminating a lot of jobs, but hopefully the unions will step in and say: ‘You can use my actor 20 times, but you have to pay them 20 times.’ And I think that is fair,’’ she said.
Reception of the film and Oscar results
Critics have observed that F1 has little to do with the real sport and contains some embarrassingly dumb scenes, yet the film performed well at the box office and even reached multiple Academy Award nominations. Of its four nominations, the film won one Oscar—for Best Sound.
In the film, Brad Pitt plays a burned-out but gifted driver who returns to the grid after a long hiatus while effectively grooming another driver alongside him. Casual viewers may find the movie loud, flashy, and action-packed; those familiar with Formula 1 should expect numerous inaccuracies and muddled storytelling. A previous review described F1 as ‘‘a very, very long promo in which dumb dialogue is occasionally interrupted by sponsor appearances.’’
Why Foster’s comments matter
Foster’s observations highlight a twofold tension around the spread of AI tools: they offer new technical capabilities for filmmaking, but risk job losses and the homogenization of creative choices. How unions and the film industry respond will be crucial in determining rights, compensation, and the division of benefits as AI technologies become more widespread.
(Source: Variety’s report on the Aspen Festival of Ideas panel.)
