Clooney kicks off Venice as festival wades into war, Gaza and AI

In Venice on September 2nd, actor George Clooney cautioned that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence were making it challenging to discern truth from fiction. At the Venice Film Festival, where he has been honored with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, the actor, filmmaker, and political activist emphasized that deepfake technology and AI-generated content were eroding trust in information.

Clooney told reporters, "It's getting harder and harder for us to discern the truth." He further warned that the technology could lead people to question genuine evidence, stating, "Worse than that, because you poison the well of saying maybe this is true, maybe this isn't, then when you see real things that are really true, people are able to say, Well, that's fake."

The two-time Oscar winner, who has been an advocate for justice, expressed doubt that current safeguards would suffice to keep pace with the technology's improvements. Clooney, who recently met with leading AI developers, joked that he did not want to see his likeness used in a tampon commercial 20 years after his death. He linked the AI challenge to broader concerns about journalism, noting that media ownership had become concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy individuals, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

Clooney also expressed skepticism about Paramount's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros, stating that media consolidation often led to job losses and was difficult to justify financially.