On April 8, Rob Bredow — chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic and SVP of creative innovation at Lucasfilm — took to the main stage at TED 2025 in Vancouver, Canada, to talk AI.
The VFX supervisor, who co-produced “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” began his TED Talk by splashing newspaper headlines on the display behind him.
Animation Magazine warns: “Animation Guide Report Raises Alarms about AI’s Industry Impact.”
The Hollywood Reporter writes: “Jeffrey Katzenberg: AI Will Drastically Cut Number of Workers It Takes To Make Animated Movies.”
Cartoon Brew reports: “Lionsgate Signs Deal With AI company Runway, Hopes That AI Can Eliminate Storyboard Artists and VFX Crews.”
“As someone who’s been a SFX artist for over 35 years, some of these headlines are pretty disappointing,” Bredow told the crowd. “They seem to say, ‘AI is coming, and it’s coming for our jobs.’”
“It can be pretty intimidating,” he admitted. “And we’re not the only ones that are a little concerned about the future of AI.”
Even so, Bredow said, he has hope.
“I believe this is an interesting collision, you know?” Bredow said. “Of tech and art. And I believe in what George Lucas created at Industrial Light & Magic, his visual effects company.”
“He founded this 50 years ago to solve the visual storytelling challenges in his films,” Bredow continued. “And what he did was he put artists side by side with engineers. They’re working together to build, innovate, and create the future.”
“This is an artist-driven innovation,” he said. “I’m passionate about this.”
Innovation, Bredow said, is baked into the film industry.
Turning back the clock, Bredow invited the crowd to look back at the early use of computer graphics in “Jurassic Park” in 1993.
He explained how the crew used a bevy of tools at their disposal to create storyboard frames, stop-motion armatures, and frame-by-frame hand-drawn animation to create digital dinosaurs.
He then jumped forward 30 years to “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” to break down how VFX artists used Harrison Ford’s on-set acting performance, a combination of generative AI tools, and frame-by-frame digital retouching to pull off Indiana’s de-aged likeness.
“Innovation thrives when the old and new technologies are blended together,” Bredow said.
“Just a beautiful collaboration of tech and art that elevates the storytelling and gives our artists new tools,” he added, pointing to the use of practical sets in tandem with immersive, single-sound stage LED walls in John Favreau’s “The Mandalorian” series. “That’s what we love.”
To bring his point home, Bredow then screened a short film called “Star Wars Field Guide.”
“What happens when you put the latest AI tools in the hands of talented artists?” Bredow posed before the premiere. “Both to see how good these tools are these days, and, what does it do to our artist’s imaginations? Where does it take their imaginations?”
Bredow explained that the short was created by VFX artist Landis Fields, who used the latest generative AI tools to show “the trajectory we’re on and the trajectory we want to be on next.”
“He created this in two weeks, to explore what it would feel like if you sent a probe droid out to a brand new ‘Star Wars’ planet. What would it see?”
The short went on to show fantastical aliens through a droid’s eyes, over a trademark “Star Wars” score. The creatures included tentacled manatees, monkey-faced spiders, hairy-backed crocodiles, and zebra-striped gorillas, all roaming and living in an alien world.
As the short wrapped and the TED crowd applauded, Bredow cautioned that it was “just an early work in progress.”
“Those are not final ‘Star Wars’ character designs, that’s not a finished product,” Bredow said. “For a show, for a movie, we need a team — for so many reasons.”
Instead, Bredow invited the audience to see “Star Wars Field Guide” as a type of “moving mood board” that could be used as a pre-production planning tool.
“We at Lucasfilm and ILM, we don’t think we’re just around the corner from one or two people making a film in a dark room by themselves,” Bredow said. “We benefit so much from a diverse skillset of the artists and technicians who work on our films. They bring so much creativity to our projects. That’s what we want to capitalize on.”
The Lucasfilm head finished his TED Talk, which will likely be released online in the coming year, by admitting that it’s natural for artists to be anxious about AI replacing human jobs — and it’s up to leaders in the industry to quell that anxiety and lead by example.
“As our tools continue to evolve, we take our responsibility seriously to grow and develop the talent that’s working on our projects,” Bredow said. “That’s artist-driven innovation … we need to use these tools thoughtfully and with the full permission of the talent.”
Header image: Rob Bredow speaks at SESSION 3 at TED 2025: Humanity Reimagined. April 7-11, 2025, Vancouver, BC. Photo: Gilberto Tadday / TED
