Leonardo DiCaprio isn’t ready to hand Hollywood over to the robots just yet… even if he admits they have some pretty cool tricks up their digital sleeves.
Recently named TIME’s 2025 Entertainer of the Year, the Oscar winner opened up about the looming shadow of artificial intelligence in filmmaking. His take? It’s complicated. While he sees the tech as a potential playground for new directors, he draws a hard line in the sand when it comes to what actually counts as art.
DiCaprio acknowledges that the industry is shifting, and while he worries about the human cost, specifically talented pros losing jobs, he isn’t dismissing the technology entirely. He sees a specific lane where it could actually be helpful.
According to TIME, DiCaprio says that AI “could be an enhancement tool for a young filmmaker to do something we’ve never seen before.”
However, he was quick to clarify that “enhancement” is the keyword. For DiCaprio, the soul of a project can’t be coded.
“I think anything that is going to be authentically thought of as art has to come from the human being,” he told TIME.
Why he thinks ‘brilliant’ AI still falls flat
To illustrate why he believes human connection is non-negotiable, DiCaprio points to the recent wave of viral AI music. He described the experience of hearing uncanny mashups that sound impressive technically but feel empty emotionally.
“Haven’t you heard these songs that are mashups that are just absolutely brilliant and you go, ‘Oh my God, this is Michael Jackson doing the Weeknd,’ or ‘This is funk from the A Tribe Called Quest song “Bonita Applebum,” done in, you know, a sort of Al Green soul-song voice, and it’s brilliant,’” he said to TIME. “And you go, ‘Cool.’ But then it gets its 15 minutes of fame and it just dissipates into the ether of other internet junk.”
He argues that without a person behind the creation, the audience eventually tunes out. “There’s no anchoring to it. There’s no humanity to it, as brilliant as it is,” he added.
Across Hollywood, actors and musicians have increasingly raised concerns about AI’s growing role. Some filmmakers view it as a tool; others fear it strips away emotion. DiCaprio’s stance sits squarely in the middle: AI might help, but only if it never replaces the human touch that makes art meaningful.
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