Actor George Clooney said Tuesday he is alarmed by the rise of artificial intelligence.
In an interview with Variety’s Marc Malkin, the "Ocean’s Eleven" star said the Hollywood community is disturbed by how realistic AI depictions have become, particularly those created with the latest audio and video generation models.
"The thing that really rattled Hollywood in general was the Sora 2 stuff," he said, mentioning one of the latest models. "That shook everybody because suddenly the quality was much better, and it’s scary."
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Clooney told the outlet he has seen AI-generated videos of himself doing things he’s never done and warned that others may struggle to distinguish those clips from reality.
"There’s been some really actually awful ones where they’ve done and said things that I’ve never done and said and put me out there, and it’s dangerous," he said. "It’s dangerous for your family. It’s dangerous. It’s complicated, but the genie is out of the bottle, and I’m not quite sure what we’re gonna do."
Clooney’s comments come as Hollywood has grappled with questions as to how AI would affect the film industry.
A proposal that an AI-generated actress named Tilly Norwood could be signed by Hollywood talent agents sparked backlash in recent weeks.
Norwood, an AI depiction of a young actress created by AI production studio Particle6, is just one version of AI content that creator Eline Van der Velden said she wants to introduce into mainstream filmmaking.
In an interview with Variety, Van der Velden predicted that full-length AI films will soon be part of the industry’s future.
Van der Velden told the outlet, "I’m sure in the coming year, there’ll be plenty of effects that will be made with AI. There’ll be some establishing shots, there’ll be some second-unit shots with AI, and then, slowly, we’ll progress to a full AI film."
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The reception to Norwood — and to the idea of full-length AI features as the next step in moviemaking — has been widely negative. The Hollywood actors union SAG-AFTRA issued a statement in September 2025 condemning the artificial actress.
"To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience," the union said.
Clooney told Variety he doesn’t believe AI actors will replace movie stars anytime soon.
"But you know, AI is gonna have the same problem that we have in Hollywood, which is making a star is not so easy. You can’t really describe what makes someone a star, and it’s not looks. It’s something unusual, and it’s hard to detect. They’ll have the same problems that we have."