Elf actor Will Ferrell once made a chilling forecast about the future of acting — and it’s starting to feel uncomfortably plausible.
Over a career spanning decades, Ferrell has cemented himself as a comedy mainstay and a seasoned voice in Hollywood — and, according to one longtime friend, he also saw a major shift coming long before most people were talking about it.
It was Molly Shannon who recently shared the story, looking back on first meeting Ferrell in the mid-1990s during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Shannon said she was working at a ‘cappuccino, scone place’ in Los Angeles when the two met, and that they ‘clicked right away’.
Their introduction came through the Groundlings comedy troupe, and not long after, both would go on to become key players on Saturday Night Live.
While Shannon was excited about where things were headed, she said Ferrell didn’t share the same confidence about the longevity of their careers in entertainment.
“I don’t know. Who knows how long this is going to last?” Shannon recalls a pessimistic Will saying.
“I just think it’s not going to last long, and I think actors are eventually going to be replaced by robots, and they’re not going to need human actors anymore.”
Shannon said she remembered thinking he was being ‘so dark’ at the time — but with how quickly AI has advanced, his comments no longer seem far-fetched.
Today, artificial intelligence is embedded in daily life in ways that didn’t exist a few years ago, from people leaning on ChatGPT to make routine choices to viral ‘Fruit Love Island’ clips circulating on TikTok.
And beyond casual use, the entertainment industry has faced growing controversy over digital performance. The emergence of so-called ‘AI actors’ has sparked anger in Hollywood, particularly with the attention around ‘AI actor’ Tilly Norwood, who drew criticism from major names including Emily Blunt and Whoopi Goldberg.
SAG-AFTRA also weighed in, stating Norwood ‘is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers’.
“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 statement added.
Blunt echoed similar concerns while discussing the topic on a Variety podcast, warning: “That is really, really scary, Come on, agencies, don’t do that. Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection.”
Still, not everyone in the business sees AI as purely a threat. Some well-known performers and filmmakers have shown interest in using the technology behind the scenes, not necessarily to replace actors, but to reshape production. Batman actor Ben Affleck, for example, founded the AI-driven filmmaking technology company InterPositive in 2022. The interest appears to extend to his family as well, with his brother Casey set to appear in a movie that relies on AI tools — not for digital performers, but for AI-generated lighting and sets.