Mark Wahlberg says AI belongs in film — if it serves the story

Mark Wahlberg said he plans to use AI to cut costs on the upcoming Pete Rose biopic — while drawing a hard line at generated scripts and digital replacements for real actors. The actor and director laid out his position on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, where he also said he's open to an AI clone of himself carrying on his legacy long after he's gone.

His comments land in the middle of Hollywood's unresolved fight over AI. Studios and performers spent 2023's strikes arguing about scanning, replication, and consent, and the debate hasn't cooled since. Wahlberg's take matters because he sits on both sides of the line: he's a leading actor worried about replacement, and an entrepreneur and angel investor who sees the technology's upside.

What did Wahlberg actually endorse?

Concrete production work. Wahlberg, who will star in the title role of the Pete Rose biopic, said AI could help with the film's budget without touching its cast.

"It's a fairly expensive movie, but, we're talking about utilizing [AI] to enhance the stadium setting, things of that nature," Wahlberg said. "I don't think you should just, you know, put an idea into ChatGPT and it puts out a script, and then you should go make that and not use real actors. But if you can use it to enhance what you're doing, I'm all for that."

So his framework splits AI use into two buckets:

• Acceptable: using AI to build environments and effects — the stadium backdrops of a baseball biopic, for instance.
• Not acceptable: generating a script from a prompt and skipping human actors altogether.

The distinction isn't new — plenty of filmmakers have drawn similar lines — but it's notable coming from a star with the clout to shape what productions actually do. His position gives studios a high-profile precedent for "enhancement" AI while explicitly withholding cover for full generation.

The takeaway: Wahlberg wants AI as a tool on set, not as the writer or the cast.

Why does he think storytelling beats effects?

Wahlberg grounded his skepticism about effects-heavy filmmaking in his own career timeline. He recalls working during the era when computer-generated imagery genuinely shocked audiences.

"I've done big, effects-driven movies," Wahlberg said. "I think I was in that kind of sweet spot when the first Jurassic Park was made, or when Perfect Storm came out, and you had that wave, the 100-foot wave that was in the trailer. Those are cutting-edge moments in technology with computer-generated images. Now, I think it's hard to do that, so I'm not so passionate about effects-driven movies per se, as opposed to real storytelling."

His argument is about diminishing returns. Jurassic Park and The Perfect Storm each delivered a moment audiences hadn't seen before. Decades later, spectacular imagery is routine, and Wahlberg believes the technology no longer carries a film by itself. That's why he says storytelling should remain at the heart of filmmaking — and why his support for AI stops at augmentation.

That framing quietly reframes the AI debate. If effects have lost their power to astonish, then AI-generated spectacle is worth even less, and the human story is the part worth protecting. Wahlberg's stake isn't nostalgic; it's a bet on what still sells tickets.

The takeaway: he sees AI as a way to serve stories, not as the attraction itself.

Would he let an AI clone carry on after him?

Yes, and he said it more than once. TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos asked Wahlberg whether he had visited the CAA Vault, a Creative Artists Agency facility where actors use scanning technology to capture their bodies, faces, movements, and voices to create AI replicas. He said he hadn't — but that he'd be open to it.

"I would be interested because I think in the future, if that's where things go, it would be cool that my children or my grandchildren could be in charge of my likeness and my image, and hopefully put me in some good movies," Wahlberg said. "It'll be interesting to see where things go."

The key word is "in charge." Wahlberg isn't proposing that a studio owns his digital double. He's proposing that his family does — a model closer to an inherited estate than a licensing deal. That distinction sits at the center of the industry's fight over posthumous and replica performances, where the question of who controls a scanned likeness remains largely unsettled.

He went further with a specific example. Wahlberg said he wouldn't be opposed to his upcoming animated series "Ted" continuing for decades with an AI version of his likeness.

"I think it's cool if I'm no longer able to do it or don't exist, and if it could continue and people want to see it, I think it'd be interesting to see where things go," Wahlberg said. "I think there's certain things from my childhood that I wish still existed and were still a part of my life […] I wouldn't be opposed to it. I think people are going to have massive opportunities to watch whatever it is they want, and if there's a real audience for that, they should be entitled to have what they want to see."

That last point is a consumer-demand argument: if audiences want AI-driven continuations, he believes they should get them. It's the same logic streaming platforms use when they revive franchises, extended here to reviving the performers themselves.

The takeaway: Wahlberg wants his likeness to become a family-controlled asset that keeps working after he stops — or after he's gone.

Why does this matter beyond Wahlberg?

Because the CAA Vault exists, and actors are deciding right now whether to walk into it. The facility Wahlberg was asked about — where scanning technology captures bodies, faces, movements, and voices for AI replicas — represents the infrastructure side of this shift. The technology isn't speculative; the scanners are built and running.

Wahlberg's stance also splits from the most hard-line corner of his industry. Where some performers treat any scanning or replication as an existential threat, he treats it as an estate-planning question: who inherits the likeness, and what do they do with it? His answer — his children and grandchildren, making "good movies" — is one possible template for consent-based replication. Critics will note that it depends entirely on trust in whoever holds the keys.

His position on production AI is similarly pragmatic. The Pete Rose biopic, with its expensive stadium settings, gives him a concrete test case for AI as a cost tool rather than a creative one. If that approach ships and works, it becomes harder to argue that any AI use on a film set means replacing writers and actors.

The takeaway: Wahlberg is offering Hollywood a middle path — AI for the backgrounds, humans for the story, family control for the likeness.

What happens next?

Watch the Pete Rose biopic. It's the first place Wahlberg's stated principles meet a real production budget, and how "enhancing the stadium setting" plays out on screen will test whether his two-bucket framework holds in practice. The CAA Vault question will keep coming back too — Wahlberg hasn't been scanned yet, and whether he walks in will say more than his stage remarks. As he put it: "It'll be interesting to see where things go."