Hannah Einbinder Slammed AI in Hollywood and The Hacks Actress Is Not Pulling Any Punches

Emmy-winning Hacks actress Hannah Einbinder is publicly opposing AI in the entertainment industry. Here is what she said, why she's saying it now, and whether actors have the power to stop it.

Hannah Einbinder, 30, the Emmy-winning actress who plays Ava Daniels opposite Jean Smart in HBO's 'Hacks,' used a recent interview to make a direct and specific statement against the use of artificial intelligence in the entertainment industry — a position that is increasingly rare in its bluntness among actively working actors whose contracts and relationships with studios create specific institutional pressures against direct criticism.

Einbinder described AI in entertainment as 'an attempt to steal' — the specific language of moral rather than merely economic objection that positions the use of AI-generated content as fundamentally a question of creative and human rights rather than a technological efficiency question. The timing of her statement — in the context of ongoing negotiations between studios and talent guilds about AI's role in production — gives it specific industry currency beyond its celebrity component.

For the context of the AI-in-entertainment debate: the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes were triggered partly by AI provisions, and the specific agreements reached in those negotiations — which were described as protective by unions and as provisional by studios — are being renegotiated in the context of rapidly advancing AI capability. The specific fear is not current AI but the trajectory of AI improvement, whose progression makes today's limited capability a poor guide to tomorrow's complete production substitution.

For Einbinder's specific position in this debate: a 30-year-old actress at the beginning of what is already a critically acclaimed career has specific stakes in the AI question that differ from those of established stars whose name recognition provides some protection. The AI risk is most acute for mid-career and emerging performers whose faces, voices, and performances could be synthesised without residual compensation.

For Hollywood's institutional response: studios' public position is that AI will augment rather than replace creative talent. Einbinder's position — 'an attempt to steal' — is the specific rejection of that framing that labour advocates argue is the honest characterisation of AI's actual intended use.