AI is stalking the last lions of Hollywood

Padding around his spacious ranch in the hills outside Los Angeles, Luke has the swagger of an actor who has made it in Hollywood. After six successful years in the movies he lives in an open-plan home with mountain views, a large swimming pool and staff who bring him steak or smoothies when required. A driver is on hand to take him into the city when he gets a call to shoot an ad or make a paid appearance at an event, for which he commands a fee equal to a week’s pay for a lowlier actor. Luke turns heads like few other artists. His agent’s only complaint is that, given half a chance, he might try to eat his co-stars.

As a 500lb African lion, Luke (pictured) has to deal with challenges not experienced by other actors. But lately, he and his human colleagues have found common cause. America’s screenwriters and actors spent half of 2023 on overlapping strikes. One of the reasons for their bust-up with the studios was the use of artificial intelligence (ai) in film and television production. Writers worry that ai will soon be churning out scripts, while actors fear that, as the technology improves the quality of computer-generated imagery (cgi), they may be replaced by digital stand-ins.