‘Titanic’ director James Cameron joins Stability AI board

Stability AI said on Tuesday James Cameron, the director of “Titanic” and “The Terminator” movies, had joined the artificial intelligence startup’s board.
GenAI’s meteoric rise has drawn Hollywood’s attention at a time when production costs have surged.
After OpenAI’s text-to-video tool Sora created waves in February with its high-quality videos, Hollywood executives and agents met with the company to discuss potential uses for the technology, industry insiders had said.
Cameron’s appointment takes Stability AI closer to its goal to “transform visual media” by providing creators with a full portfolio of AI tools, CEO Prem Akkaraju said.
London-based Stability AI, which raised about $80 million in funding earlier this year, makes an artificial intelligence image-generation tool that rivals those made by Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
It also provides Stable Video Diffusion, a text-to-video generation tool.
Cameron said the intersection of GenAI and computer-generated imagery will “unlock new ways for artists to tell stories in ways we could have never imagined”.
Hollywood’s relationship with AI has not been smooth sailing, however.
A major reason that writers and actors went on strike in 2023 was to seek protections for their images and their craft from the unregulated use of AI, with limits on how studios can use the technology when making movies and TV shows.
Cameron will join other newly appointed Stability AI board members, including former Facebook President Sean Parker, who serves as executive chairman of the company.
Stability AI had raised $101 million in a seed round led by Coatue Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners at a $1 billion valuation in 2022, but has since been struggling to raise more funds due to the lack of a business model.