Simu Liu is taking a firm stand against the use of artificial intelligence to replace human actors, especially background performers.
The Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star recently responded to Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary’s comments suggesting that using AI instead of extras could help lower high production costs.
Liu wasn’t impressed by that idea, calling it both unfair and out of touch.
“Sure, blame the extras making 15–22 dollars an hour struggling to make a living and not above the line people making multiple millions,” Liu wrote on X, responding to O’Leary’s claim about cutting film budgets.
During an interview with Deadline on Monday while promoting his upcoming Netflix animated movie In Your Dreams, Liu explained why he felt so strongly about defending background actors and the value they bring to film sets.
“First of all, I thought that take that I was responding to is a really dumb take, particularly really tone deaf and out of touch and also just kind of incorrect,” he said.
“The idea that these background actors who are making minimum wage are somehow the reason why movies are now costing too much, that’s simply not true.”
Liu’s passion for the topic comes from personal experience. Before landing major roles, he started out as a background actor himself, appearing in Pacific Rim shortly after losing his accounting job.
That early opportunity, he said, helped him understand the filmmaking process from the ground up.
“This idea of replacing actors with AI, it’s so antithetical to my development as an actor,” Liu explained.
“I think if I was able to learn from that experience, then how many other people are doing the same? In depriving the world of background actors, you’re also depriving people the opportunity to kind of pick up these skills.”
For Liu, the issue goes beyond budgets, it’s about preserving the human element of art.
“Film is such an artist’s medium. Of all the uses of AI that have come forth, replacing art is just, I feel like, the last thing that anybody wants to do with AI,” he said.
“I feel like art is art because it’s human. It comes down to even the way that extras move…it all plays into the frame, and it’s all meaningful to the story.”
He also believes audiences can instinctively tell when something feels off.
“I really do feel like human beings are smart. I feel like when we see somebody in the background not moving like a human, we know. I feel like we could still tell the difference, at least right now.”
Liu isn’t alone in this stance.
His Pacific Rim director, Guillermo del Toro, recently made headlines for expressing similar frustration over the use of AI in creative work, saying he’d “rather die” than use it in his films.
As the debate over AI’s place in Hollywood continues, Liu’s message remains clear, storytelling, at its heart, should always stay human.
