Nicolas Cage has revealed he rejected Amazon, whose streaming service is behind “Spider-Noir,” when the company tried to get him to sign a waiver involving the use of artificial intelligence in the superhero series.
“I’m probably not going to be working with that studio again, but that’s OK,” said the actor at a New York Comic-Con panel on Saturday.
Cage, who stars as Ben Reilly/The Spider in the series, described Amazon as a “very AI-friendly company,” pointing out that the tech giant made a $50 billion investment in OpenAI. (Note: The investment was announced in February, nearly a year after filming wrapped on “Spider-Noir.”)
“I am not an AI-friendly actor so connect —,” began Cage before the crowd roared in applause. “Connect those dots. I’m not a member of their club.”
The details of the waiver aren’t immediately clear.
“Spider-Noir” was met with overwhelmingly positive reviews and took home five Emmy Awards among 11 nominations at this year’s ceremony (the most by a Prime Video series this year) but, per Deadline, didn’t have the “staying power” as other top-ranked shows on the Amazon streaming service.
The series was canceled after one season.
JS has reached out to Amazon for comment.
Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for ReedPop
Cage has drawn a line in the sand of sorts with AI, using an acceptance speech at last year’s Saturn Awards to remark on why robots “cannot reflect the human condition for us.”
“That is a dead end if an actor lets one AI robot manipulate his or her performance even a little bit, an inch will eventually become a mile, and all integrity, purity and truth of art will be replaced by financial interests only,” he said.
“We can’t let that happen.”
Cage has a history of voicing concerns over how technology can manipulate appearance after revealing that a scene he shot as Kal-El/Superman for “The Flash” (2023) wasn’t what he shot for the film.
Cage — who was brought onto the film in a nod to his what-could’ve-been part as Superman in Tim Burton’s canceled “Superman Lives” project — told Yahoo Entertainment he didn’t think the cameo in “The Flash” was created through AI before noting that CGI was used to “de-age” him.
“I know Tim is upset about AI, as I am,” he said of the director, who sounded off on AI months earlier.
He continued, “AI is a nightmare to me. It’s inhumane. You can’t get more inhumane than artificial intelligence. But I don’t think it [was] AI [in ‘The Flash’]. I just think that they did something with it, and again, it’s out of my control.”