What actors will survive in the age of AI

I like movies just like anyone else. I have quite a few favorite actors.

But lately, when I see articles and trends about AI entering deep into filmmaking, I get this thought. Will we really still need actors to actually perform characters in the future?

When I think back to the cartoons I watched as a kid, the characters in them weren't performed by anyone. A character drawn by an author is a person in itself. It's the same with novels. Characters in writing don't need actors to begin with. But when these works become live-action films, we needed an actor to live out and express that character instead. So if AI ever becomes capable of fully reproducing the appearance, expressions, and even the texture of emotion in a live-action character, will human actors still be essential?

Someone might say that emotion happens precisely because a real person performs a real person. I once thought the same way—that characters created by AI, being non-human, wouldn't move us. But thinking about it carefully, we cry and laugh plenty at animations where non-human 'human characters' appear. I have many memories of being deeply moved and shedding tears even more intensely.

So maybe the most important thing in expressing a character isn't whether it's a real person or not. When audiences are moved by a film, it's not only because the actor mimics a real person well. Rather, it might be more fundamental how deeply the audience enters into the character's circumstances, emotions, and position that the actor conveys. After all, the core of film is story and development, and the message and emotion the audience receives through it.

Maybe that's why Hollywood has resisted AI technology so strongly. Both actors and creators, not simply as a technical issue, but instinctively feel that the very way humans have expressed humans could be shaken.

My conclusion is relatively simple.

AI will become something capable of expressing emotions and details that humans find difficult to imagine. An AI at that level could definitely replace some roles of human actors.
But just as when the invention of the camera appeared, painting evolved beyond realistic depiction into deeper artistic dimensions of abstraction and expressionism, actors who perform the unique wrinkles of human life and momentary details that only humans can have—beyond the realm of data AI can implement—will stand in an even more singular position. Meanwhile, actors who fail to prove value beyond technically perfect imitation will simply fade behind the curtain.

Like all industries, AI will be a massive filter that erases 'replaceable domains' and clearly reveals 'irreplaceable human capacity.' The actors of the future will have to be reborn not as mere 'performers,' but as accomplished artists who draw up the deep wells of emotion that only humans can reach. The more AI mimics humans, the more paradoxically audiences will thirst for 'the genuine heart experienced by actual people.' What makes us cry and laugh is always 'human sincerity,' and only actors who express this sincerity will live forever on the screen of the future.

Not just in film and acting, but across all domains of the world, people with capacities that AI cannot easily replace will shine brighter, while the majority who lack these will gradually lose their ground.