Christopher Nolan talks about the DGA’s guidelines against AI usage in films and ‘The Odyssey’s protection against AI training models: ‘We have to strongly resist that'

Director Christopher Nolan said on the 'Hollywood Insiders' podcast that he is glad the Directors Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers agreed stricter guardrails on AI use in film. He also pointed to the credits of his film The Odyssey, which state that it can never be ingested, scraped or used as training data for generative AI models.

Nolan said he believes the notice is the first of its kind in a film's boilerplate, and he credited the production studio for including it. He argued that AI is too broad a term and that companies use it to avoid responsibility, which he said must be strongly resisted.

The article reports Nolan's views rather than measured results. He said the fight will be long and ongoing, and that studios, not the guild, hold the copyrights and must act on them.

Nolan spoke on the 'Hollywood Insiders' podcast about the DGA and AMPTP guardrails. He said he welcomes them but that how AI is used keeps changing, and he called AI too big a catchall term that companies use to absolve themselves of responsibility.

On The Odyssey, he said he was proud of the credits language barring ingestion as training data and grateful to the studio. He called it a principle and said it protects film workers from having their work stolen and repurposed.

On legal ground, Nolan said legislation already protects creators and that fair use defences will not hold up in court over the longer term, citing significant judgments already made. He said the effort will be ongoing.