Reese Witherspoon is on the cutting edge of technology. Unfortunately, she seems to keep getting cut by that edge. In an interview with Glamour Magazine, promoting the upcoming season of “The Morning Show,” she announced that she’d like women to join her in the blade factory, insisting that the future of filmmaking is artificial intelligence and it’s time to get on board—apparently completely forgetting how well her previous embrace of NFTs went.
AI came up in the conversation because it will apparently be central to the plot of this season’s “The Morning Show.” But while it seems like the streaming series will have a more skeptical view of generative AI, Witherspoon is all in. She told Glamour, “I’m always looking forward to how media is evolving and how I can help be part of bringing women along in those emerging industries. And now we’re doing it with AI. It’s so, so important that women are involved in AIâ€|because it will be the future of filmmaking.”
Witherspoon, who does not have any writing or directing credits on finished products, is saying creatives need to get on board the generative AI bandwagon or get run over. “You can be sad and lament it all you want, but the change is here,” she said, while also getting a few plugs in for her personal favorite AI products. Per the interview, she uses Perplexity “every day,” as well as product search platform Vetted AI and the virtual assistant Simple AI to “save time” on tasks.
And look, Reese has a real sense for these things. Back in 2021, she infamously tweeted, “Crypto is here to stay. I’m committed to supporting creators who have pioneered the NFT space, and encouraging more women to be a part of the conversation.” She put her digital money where her mouth is, for better or worse, and launched an effort to turn NFTs into movies and TV shows through her production company. It seems like that never actually came to fruition, just like most NFT “media” projects (remember the planned Bored Ape movies?), but apparently, you can’t get burned if you simply refuse to acknowledge the flames.
Reese’s effort to get more women into crypto didn’t really seem to put much of a dent in the male-dominated space, though frankly, women probably aren’t all that worse off for avoiding the scam-ridden, faux economy of digital tokens and memecoins. But damned if she’s not going to try to get women into another tech bubble. Maybe some women can secure a big bag before the whole thing goes bust, but regardless, Witherspoon will probably be just fine financially, so it’s pretty easy for her to tell others to get involved.
To Witherspoon’s credit, while she took a pretty massive L on crypto, she did have solid foresight on one thing: she knew Quibi was going to be a bust. Had her then-husband listened to her, maybe they’d still be together.
