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Dear Readers,
Today, I’m excited to share my interview with Emmy nominated actress Cara Buono. Who is known around the world as Karen Wheeler from Stranger Things. Cara has starred in film, television and independent projects. We discuss artificial intelligence, acting, and the future of storytelling on screen.
In this interview Cara recalls her first day inside a studio scanning truck, explains why she saw an AI tsunami coming years before most people, and reflects on the tens of millions of human work years absorbed as training data. She draws a clear line between supportive tools and exploitative systems, between safer sets and silent reuse of an actor’s face or voice without actual consent.
Our conversation covers what audiences value most, the small breath or flicker in an eye that no model understands, and why background actors, younger performers, and craftspeople need strong protections as studios rush toward automation. For anyone who cares about film, streaming subscriptions, or AI policy, this is a fundamental look at what is at stake for performers and audiences alike.
Settle in for a thoughtful conversation with someone who has acted in some of the best-loved shows and franchises of all time, who loves storytelling, respects technology, and refuses to forget the humans whose labor powers these systems.
Enjoy the read!
All the best,
Kim Isenberg: Hi, I’m Kim Isenberg, editor-in-chief of Superintelligence. Today I’m thrilled to be talking with actress Cara Buono about AI. Cara is known to many of you and hundreds of millions worldwide as Karen Wheeler from Stranger Things. Today we will talk about AI, and how it’s reshaping film and television from an actor’s point of view.
Before we jump in, a quick intro: Cara is an Emmy-nominated actress whose work spans global franchises, critical darlings, and celebrated independent films. Today, she’s best known for her role in Netflix’s global phenomenon Stranger Things, and she’s just wrapped work alongside Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti, and Emma Stone in Jesse Eisenberg’s upcoming feature film.
Welcome to Superintelligence, Cara! It's a pleasure to meet you.
Cara Buono: Thanks so much, Kim — I’m excited to be here and really looking forward to this conversation.
Kim Isenberg: Over the last decade, big franchises have quietly adopted more digital workflows — from VFX reference scans to full-body captures. Do you remember the first time you realized your likeness was being archived in that way?
Cara Buono: I do. It was on Stranger Things a couple of years ago. We were all brought into what we called ‘the scanning truck’ this high-tech photo booth on wheels. At the time, it was framed as something purely practical: continuity, stunts, VFX reference. None of us had the vocabulary then for digital doubles or AI replicas. And honestly, I don’t think the studios did either. It all felt experimental, not ominous.
Now, as AI use is growing, I look back and realize how much bigger the implications were. Not malicious necessarily, just a lack of care and understanding. The industry was moving fast; now it’s moving even faster. Transparency has to catch up.
Kim Isenberg: You’ve said you “saw the AI tsunami coming” years before most people understood it. Was there a moment when you realized everything was about to change?
Cara Buono: It was around 2018 or 2019. We were between seasons of Stranger Things, and I was reading early articles about image synthesis and voice cloning. These pieces weren’t really what you’d call ‘mainstream’ news, but they were enough to make my stomach drop. Something clicked and I said to friends, ‘This is going to be like a tsunami. The tide is pulling out now, and everyone still thinks it’s normal, like another new technology, but that actually means the wave is coming.’ People just sort of shrugged it off.
Later, as it became clearer, I was on X regularly reading posts about it that basically said, ‘We can make a movie without writers, actors, or directors!’ And people were cheering this on. It shocked me.
And I thought to myself: ‘Can you hear yourselves?’
You’re sitting there using a tool that you want to replace creative people with — but how do you think it learned all that? The only reason the technology can mimic a writer or an actor or a director is because it has vacuumed up all the work we’ve ever done.
In the entertainment business, that means all those performances, all those scripts, all those visual ideas that’s the real content. So when people say, ‘We don’t need artists anymore,’ I think: you’re not actually creating anything. You’re remixing the ideas, the work and the sacrifice of people who devoted their lives to this.
Kim Isenberg: Stranger Things is a massive, VFX-heavy production. Where can AI truly help — and where does it cross the line?
Cara Buono: There are positive uses: safer stunt planning, faster previs, reducing the workload for VFX teams. In ways like this, AI can support people and human creativity.
It crosses a line when it replaces people and their work without their consent, including actors, background performers, editors, craftspeople. A set is an ecosystem of all kinds of pros who make the magic that you see as an audience. If you hollow out that ecosystem to save money, you lose the humanity that makes the stories that you love really resonate.
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Kim Isenberg: Most actors describe AI as both creatively exciting and deeply threatening. Where do you land?
Cara Buono: I guess I’m probably in the middle. Some creative possibilities are exciting and make things you couldn’t imagine a decade ago possible. But the existential threat to the way we make the magic is real. Our faces and voices are our livelihoods. Once you can replicate someone without them, what does ownership and identity mean?
I’m open-minded about the potential but protective of the human element of the work for obvious reasons. We have to be.
Kim Isenberg: You attended the event called ‘AI on the Lot’ in Hollywood, California this past summer. What was the most surprising thing you learned about how AI is already being used in film and TV?
Cara Buono: Probably the biggest surprise was how earnest a lot of the attendees from tech were about storytelling. There is a growing sense that tech wants to ‘take over Hollywood,’ but that wasn’t the vibe. They love movies.
What concerned me was the speed. Technology moves a lot faster than entertainment. Our contracts and ethics discussions move at a traditional human pace. Those two timelines don’t align right now and that gap is where people get hurt.
Kim Isenberg: Background actors and younger performers are especially vulnerable. What protections should be universal?
Cara Buono: Informed consent has to be mandatory. This can’t be rushed. It can’t be buried in a contract in legal language. Everyone deserves to know how their image is being captured, stored, and potentially used. And if a digital version of a performer is used, they should be compensated meaningfully. This isn’t anti-technology. It's a pro-creator mindset. Tech companies, giants and startups, fiercely protect their intellectual property. This is the exact same principle. To pretend it is any different is clearly hypocritical and ridiculous. It’s one of the reasons why we have unions. But like I said technology is moving faster than the law.
Kim Isenberg: Studios are experimenting with AI for previs, digital doubles, and performance modification. Could AI expand roles — or narrow opportunities?
I think that I probably should explain the jargon a bit for those of your readers who don’t know these TV / movie industry terms:
Previs are rough computer-generated storyboards that plan shots, camera moves, and action before real filming
Digital Doubles are 3d cgi versions of real actors used for dangerous, impossible, or FX-heavy shots
Performance Modification involves changing an actor’s recorded performance digitally (face, voice, or body) without fully replacing them
Cara Buono: There are at least two ways that I can imagine this can go from here: One path, AI expands the creative possibilities open to people in the industry, including new worlds and tedious tasks get way easier. In the other, it narrows everything because one digital double can be reused endlessly. What we get depends on the rules we set now, not after something goes wrong or a small group of people and companies rip off everyone else, including the viewing public.
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Kim Isenberg: You’re known for emotionally nuanced work. What can AI still not replicate?
Cara Buono: Human behavior and feelings are incredibly subtle, complex and often contradictory. The smallest gestures, the breath you did or didn’t take intentionally, a flicker in your eyes or a turn of your head can each shift the meaning of a scene. Together they make you feel love, anger, fear, empathy, and all of the other ‘long tail’ feelings that make watching worthwhile.
AI can mimic patterns, but it can’t understand an actor’s intention or interpretation of a script or the unwritten or unspoken cooperation between two actors and a director. It doesn’t know why a moment hurts or why it matters. It can’t feel the weight of a memory, or the hope behind a choice that an actor makes or a set of choices that they make together.
That’s the soul part. That’s the human part. It comes from performers living, loving, winning, losing, from being afraid and from being brave.
And that’s what audiences connect to — that shared human pulse underneath everything. AI can approximate shape and sound, but it can’t replace that connection. And that’s the part of storytelling that can’t be engineered.
Take Stranger Things for example. I started recording what was happening on set 10 years ago. Taking my own video of the work that we were doing as cast and crew. That video of how the magic gets made by people is just as popular, if not more so than the show itself.
Kim Isenberg: For fans who may not understand the stakes, what's the one thing you want them to know about how AI could impact storytelling?
Cara Buono: I’d want them to remember that the moments in shows and movies that they cherish — the funny ones, the heartbreaking ones — come from human choices and the actor’s ability to tap into all those feelings and experiences. Your favorite actors, scenes and films were made from these by writers, actors and crews.
What worries me most, especially watching the AI discussions on X, is the glee some people had about ‘replacing Hollywood.’ Someone wrote that movies could be made ‘without writers, actors, or directors,’ and many tech people seem to believe that this is progress.
The only reason the technology can mimic any of that is because it absorbed human work: every script, performance, design, idea. So when people say artists are replaceable, the irony is they’re using a tool built on the very humanity they’re seeking to eliminate for greater profit.
When I was starting my acting career a lot of people outside of the industry would ask or think 'how long can you keep doing this?’ or ‘When are you getting a real job?’ There has always been this cultural blind spot where people don’t understand how many years of work it takes to develop the skills and the experience to give the people what they want. Unless you’re famous or wealthy, your work, your art isn’t considered real work.
But every person has at one point been home sick, or lonely, or grieving, or with someone sharing a laugh or romantic feelings. What do you turn to? Music, movies, books. All things a human being made.
There are millions of artists dedicating their lives to make that moment for you. AI can support storytelling, absolutely. But it shouldn’t erase the humans whose work brought it to life.
We made our careers, but so did the public. And we rely on each other mutually, much more than I think most ‘consumers of content’ understand.
If we want great art, if you want great art, you have to protect the artists.
Watch Stranger Things Season 5 here: https://www.netflix.com/title/80057281
