Jon M. Chu slams studios for forgiving Silicon Valley’s wicked ways

Jon M. Chu suspects artificial intelligence may have been born wicked.

The hit filmmaker’s Silicon Valley upbringing, which he details in his 2024 memoir “Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen,” made him comfortable with technology from an early age, he said Sunday during an L.A. Times Festival of Books panel. It even gave him an edge as a young person pursuing a creative career that now includes directing credits for blockbuster films such as “Wicked” and “Crazy Rich Asians.”

But Chu said he believes the entertainment industry has been too lax about tech companies’ ethically questionable training methods since the advent of generative AI, calling the unauthorized use of Hollywood creations an “original sin.”

“There was an initial sin that I think we’re not over yet, which is they gathered all the data. They took all the scripts, they took all the movies,” Chu told the audience. In his view, the studios who owned such copyrighted materials didn’t fight back hard enough.

“It feels like they’re saying, ‘We’re past it, move on,’” he said, adding that he could “never forgive that.”

But the “Crazy Rich Asians” director said that despite generative AI being “freaking scary” for the entertainment industry, he is confident it will never replace human creativity. Nor will it rob people of the right to define “art” for themselves.

“I don’t think the robots choose what we decide is valuable,” Chu said.

“We decide, and that’s very empowering for me,” he said.

Chu also spoke during the Sunday panel about his forthcoming projects, including “Wicked: For Good,” which is slated for a Nov. 21 theatrical release. Outside of the movie musical, Chu is also working on adaptations of Britney Spears’ 2023 memoir “The Woman in Me” and the video game “Split Fiction,” which centers on two writer friends who become trapped in a high-tech simulation of their imaginations.

“That was leaked, so I cannot confirm or deny that, but yes,” he said of the latter adaptation project reportedly starring Sydney Sweeney.

Still, the director said the challenge of visualizing the video game’s dual realities “excites me, because I don’t know how to balance that correctly yet.”