Robert Downey Jr has said that he’s confident that executives at Marvel will not use AI to bring back Tony Stark but has stated he will “sue” should it ever happen.
The actor, who played Tony Stark/Iron Man in 10 different Marvel movies between 2008 and 2019, was recently announced to be returning to the MCU to portray major villain Doctor Doom in Avengers: Doomsday.
However, the 59-year-old is confident that Marvel bosses will not continue to place him in films using AI once he has died – and sent a warning to any future executives at the company who might wish to do so.
During an appearance on the On with Kara Swisher podcast, Downey Jr was asked about his thoughts on the current wave of artificial intelligence being used in multiple industries. He bluntly replied by saying: “How do I feel about everything that’s going on? I feel about it minimally because I have an actual emotional life that’s occurring that doesn’t have a lot of room for that.”
He did give a more direct answer when it came to Marvel and any ideas about Tony Stark’s character being resurrected using AI: “To go back to the MCU, I am not worried about them hijacking my character’s soul, because there’s like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway, and they would never do that to me, with or without me.”
Swisher then interjected to cast doubt on Downey Jr’s statement, believing that “future executives certainly will” want to use his likeness again. The actor quickly replied saying: “And I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives.”
After Swisher pointed out that Downey Jr will likely be dead should anything like that ever occur, the Oppenheimer star joked that his law firm will “still be very active”.
In 2023, Hollywood went on its longest strike ever with performers protesting against and seeking assurances over the use of AI, as well as, residual pay hikes related to streaming, as well as better employee benefits.
More recently the likes of Nicolas Cage and Morgan Freeman have spoken out about their concerns surrounding AI, with the technology being used to recreate the voice of James Earl Jones, to carrying on featuring in Star Wars projects.
It comes after Titanic and Avatar director James Cameron joined the board of an artificial intelligence start-up. The 70-year-old will be joining Stability AI, the London-based maker of text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion.
