Gal Gadot says she spent months negotiating contract protections to ensure artificial intelligence would not touch her acting performance in an upcoming film that uses AI to generate its sets and lighting.
The Wonder Woman star has a lead role in director Doug Liman’s film Bitcoin, alongside Oscar winner Casey Affleck. According to producer Ryan Kavanaugh, the cast filmed on a bare stage, with AI used to create the sets and lighting rather than building them physically. Kavanaugh has said this approach was the only way the film could get made, cutting the projected budget from roughly $200 million to about $70 million.
Speaking on a recent podcast, Gadot said she views AI’s role in filmmaking as unavoidable. “The [AI] train has left the station. You’re going to work with it or be out of the game completely,” she said. “I am trying to make the best of it and protect what I can protect. The AI component in this movie is for sets and the lighting. We had a broad crew and a lot of people were working on this movie.”
Gadot said the contract negotiations over how AI could be used were unusually lengthy. “This was the longest contract I have ever worked on. It was six months for my lawyers to go through every scenario we could think about as far as the AI component of it,” she said. “I did not want AI to have anything to do with my performance. We had to protect that, to such an extent that SAG called my lawyers to ask for pointers to update the SAG contract to protect other actors. As far as the performances, it’s all me.”
Gadot acknowledged some unease about the technology while saying she has chosen to engage with it directly. “I am afraid of AI,” she said, “but I am going to be afraid and look away? No. I am afraid but I am playing with it and learning it and trying to educate myself.”
She also described a practical benefit on set: without the need to pause for lighting setups, which typically consume much of a shooting day, the production could keep filming continuously. “Here we would film nonstop because we didn’t have to wait for lighting,” she said. “We would film on and on and on for 10 hours. So that was amazing. As actors, you’re always hot. You don’t cool off.”
