‘Why Is AI Helping Me Write a Song or Tell a Story?’ Pirates of the Caribbean Director Slams AI Use for What We ‘Need to Be Human’

Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski has railed against the addition of AI tools into creative processes, as he prepares to launch a new sci-fi comedy featuring a rogue artificial intelligence as its villain.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die arrives in theaters this Friday, February 13 as Verbinski’s first movie in eight years. Sam Rockwell stars as a time traveller who seeks help in the present day from a group of quirky diner customers, in order to stop an AI threat in the future.

Discussing the movie’s AI villain character with The Hollywood Reporter, Verbinski said he wanted to create an adversary that wasn’t “HAL 9000 or Skynet” but an AI that was worse because “it wants you to like it” — similar to the wave of seemingly-helpful AI bots and tools being injected into everyday apps and software today.

“So much of what AI has initially been focused on is how to keep us engaged. What do we buy? What do we consume? More importantly, what do we hate?” Verbinski said. “We’re writing our worst attributes into its source code, and it’s generating so much stuff back into the internet that it’s starting to drink its own piss.”

Verbinski said he’d been in meetings with movie executives where he’s been told the future of film-making is using AI to make movies for cheaper, and as a “tool” he should use. “They’re very fast,” he said of discussions where this topic has come up.

“Why is AI helping me write a song or tell a story?” he continued. “I don’t want it to breathe or f*** for me; I want it to solve cancer. Send some shit through a black hole; do something that we can’t do. Or dig a ditch; do the shit we don’t want to do. Why is it coming after the stuff that we essentially need to do to be human beings?”

Verbinski’s comments echo the similar — if rather more succint — verdict on generative AI from Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Knives Out director Rian Johnson. “F*** AI,” Johnson said recently. “It’s something that’s making everything worse in every single way.”

In September 2025, the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union issued a strongly worded statement in response to the emergence of Tilly Norwood, the AI-generated “actress” that has enraged Hollywood. In December last year, Disney invested $1 billion in OpenAI and agreed to let the algorithm legally create content using 200 of its most beloved characters. Meanwhile, in the background, the $82.7 billion sale of Warner Bros. to Netflix rumbles on, as one recent report suggested that Netflix valued Warner Bros. so highly because it wanted to use the century-old company’s intellectual properties within its own generative AI content in future.

Image credit: Eric Charbonneau/Briarcliff Entertainment via Getty Images

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social