The legendary filmmaker joined Stability’s board of directors as a member and will support the startup to “unlock new opportunities to empower creators to tell stories in ways once unimaginable.”
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“James Cameron lives in the future and waits for the rest of us to catch up,” said Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Stability. “Stability AI's mission is to transform visual media for the next century by giving creators a full stack AI pipeline to bring their ideas to life. We have an unmatched advantage to achieve this goal with a technological and creative visionary like James at the highest levels of our company.
“This is not only a monumental statement for Stability AI, but the AI industry overall.” Akkaraju added, “The next frontier in visual media will be forged by a true fusion of artist and technology, and Stability AI is leading the charge.”
Cameron is the academy-award-winning director and visual storyteller behind one of cinema’s most iconic AI-related movies: The Terminator.
Released in 1985, Terminator sees a cyborg assassin from the future travel back in time to kill the mother of the leader of the resistance in the future.
Alongside Metropolis and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Cameron’s Terminator movie still holds sway with the public perception of AI in that it has the potential to destroy humanity.
The legendary filmmaker is now on the board of a startup developing AI technologies with a much more benevolent goal: augmenting media and content creation.
Stability commercialises Stable Diffusion, the AI image model that alongside Midjourney, helped capture the initial mainstream interest in generative AI several months before ChatGPT’s release.
Stability has produced several powerful image generation models and is moving into video generation through the likes of Stable Video Diffusion — similar to OpenAI’s Sora model — which the startup believes can be applied in industries such as media, entertainment, education, and marketing.
“I’ve spent my career seeking out emerging technologies that push the very boundaries of what’s possible, all in the service of telling incredible stories,” said Cameron. “I was at the forefront of CGI over three decades ago, and I’ve stayed on the cutting edge since. Now, the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave.
“The convergence of these two totally different engines of creation will unlock new ways for artists to tell stories in ways we could have never imagined. Stability AI is poised to lead this transformation. I’m delighted to collaborate with Sean, Prem, and the Stability AI team as they shape the future of all visual media.”
In addition to James Cameron, Stability is shaking up its board with other further additions including former Facebook president Sean Parker, Dana Settle, co-founder and managing partner of Greycroft, and Colin Bryant, COO and general partner of Coatue Management.
Stability’s boardroom shakeup comes as the startup is trying to improve its fortunes.
Emad Mostaque stepped down as CEO in March having founded the startup in 2019 amid financial difficulties as it struggled to commercialise Stable Diffusion.
Rumours of a sale to rival firms like Cohere and Jasper were floating around at the end of 2023, but the startup persevered with new CEO Akkaraju looking to improve the company’s fortunes.
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