Nicolas Cage Says He’s Terrified AI Will "Steal" His Body
Protest Too Much
Nicolas Cage has joined the growing ranks of artificial intelligence critics in Hollywood — even though he allowed his body to be scanned for potentially that very purpose.
In a wide-ranging interview with The New Yorker, the 60-year-old "National Treasure" star told author Susan Orlean, the author of the book at the center of his 2001 sleeper hit "Adaptation," that he was on his way to "get a scan done" for some upcoming projects that may or may not involve the use of AI.
"Well, they have to put me in a computer and match my eye color and change — I don't know," he told the author. "They're just going to steal my body and do whatever they want with it via digital AI."
"God, I hope not AI," Cage continued, somewhat confusingly, and perhaps confusedly as well. "I'm terrified of that. I've been very vocal about it."
The Inhumanity
Previously subjected to nonconsensual — though innocuous — AI treatment himself, it's a bit of an overstatement to say that Cage has been "very" vocal about the technology, especially compared to some of his fellow actors who spoke out during SAG-AFTRA's strike over its use last year.
He did, however, discuss anxieties about it last year after pointing out that his brief turn as Superman in "The Flash" was different than what he'd filmed.
"What I was supposed to do was literally just be standing in an alternate dimension, if you will, and witnessing the destruction of the universe," Cage told Yahoo Entertainment last November. "When I went to the picture, it was me fighting a giant spider."
"I did not do that," he insisted. "That was not what I did."
In that same interview last year, Cage went on to call the technology "a nightmare."
"It's inhumane," he said. "You can't get more inhumane than artificial intelligence."
Cage Vs. Cage
Notably, Cage was also digitally de-aged using AI for 2022's satirical action-comedy "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent." The film features the actor playing a down-on-his-luck version of himself named "Nick Cage" as well as "Nicky," a spectral younger self who torments him for not being successful — and the "Mandy" star said that when he first heard the film's pitch, he was pretty freaked out.
"There was no muscle in my body that told me I should play a character named Nick Cage," he told Variety at the film's premiere. "It was absolute horror."
Ultimately, Cage was convinced to do the film by a "very intelligent, sensitive letter" from its director. Maybe something similar happened with his upcoming maybe-AI body scans, too.
More on AI in entertainment: New Movie Uses AI to De-Age Tom Hanks and Robin Wright to What They Looked Like in the 90s
