'Titanic' director James Cameron joins Stability AI board

(Reuters) -Stability AI said on Tuesday James Cameron, the director of "Titanic" and "The Terminator" movies, had joined the artificial intelligence startup's board.

The meteoric rise of generative AI has drawn Hollywood's attention at a time when production costs have surged.

After OpenAI's text-to-video tool Sora created waves in February with its high-quality videos, Hollywood executives and agents met with the company to discuss potential uses for the technology, industry insiders had said.

Cameron's appointment takes Stability AI closer to its goal to "transform visual media" by providing creators with a full portfolio of AI tools, CEO Prem Akkaraju said.

London-based Stability AI, which raised about $80 million in funding earlier this year, makes an artificial intelligence image-generation tool that rivals those made by Alphabet's Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

The firm raised $101 million in a seed round led by Coatue Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners at a $1 billion valuation in 2022.

Stability AI also provides Stable Video Diffusion, a text-to-video generation tool.

Cameron said the intersection of GenAI and computer-generated imagery will "unlock new ways for artists to tell stories in ways we could have never imagined."

Hollywood's relationship with AI has not been smooth sailing, however.

A major reason for writers and actors going on strike in 2023 was to seek protection for their images and their craft from the unregulated use of AI, with limits on how studios can use the technology when making movies and TV shows.

Cameron joined other newly appointed Stability AI board members, including former Facebook President Sean Parker, who serves as executive chairman of the company.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Alan Barona)