Robert Downey Jr. Reveals How He Feels About AI Replicas of Himself

Published: October 30, 2024

Robert Downey Jr. Reveals How He Feels About AI Replicas of Himself

By Movieguide® Contributor

Robert Downey Jr. is not a fan of artificial intelligence.

The Marvel actor revealed on Kara Swisher’s podcast that he intends “to sue all future executives” who create an AI version of him.

Variety reported, “The Oscar winner does not want his likeness being used on screen through AI technology and/or deepfakes. The topic came up in relation to Downey’s Marvel tenure as Iron Man, but he’s confident Marvel would not recreate his Tony Stark through AI.”

When asked about how he feels being digitally recreated, he said, “There’s two tracks. How do I feel about everything that’s going on? I feel about it minimally because I have an actual emotional life that’s occurring that doesn’t have a lot of room for that.”

Swisher told Downey that many “future executives will want” to recreate him. Downey immediately responded, “Well, you’re right. I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives just on spec.”

One of the ways Downey is speaking out against his feelings toward AI is through the Broadway play, “McNeal.”

A synopsis of the play reads:

Jacob McNeal (Academy Award® winner Robert Downey Jr.) is a great writer, one of our greatest, a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But McNeal also has an estranged son, a new novel, old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination with Artificial Intelligence. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar’s new play is a startling and wickedly smart examination of the inescapable humanity – and increasing inhumanity – of the stories we tell.

The play “takes aim at corporate giants in the AI space such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.”

“I don’t envy anyone who has been over-identified with the advent of this new phase of the information age. The idea that somehow it belongs to them because they have these super huge start-ups is a fallacy,” Downey said of Altman. “The problem is when these individuals believe that they are the arbiters of managing this but meanwhile are wanting and/or needing to be seen in a favorable light. It turns me off and makes me not want to engage with them because they are not being truthful.”