‘Ocean’s 14’ Star George Clooney Has One Big Fear About AI, and It Involves a Tampon Commercial

George Clooney’s Venice Film Festival appearances tend to draw attention no matter the year, but his 2026 trip carries extra weight since he’s returning to accept the festival’s highest honor. The Golden Lion for lifetime achievement puts him squarely in the spotlight during opening week, and true to form, Clooney used the moment to weigh in on far more than just his own career.

Speaking at his opening day press conference ahead of Wednesday’s ceremony, Clooney fielded questions spanning Hollywood politics, the state of American journalism, and the ongoing Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Given his decades of outspoken activism alongside his acting career, reporters clearly came prepared with more than softball questions about his upcoming award.

It was his response on artificial intelligence, though, that landed with the sharpest edge. Asked how AI impacts him personally, Clooney said he would like to avoid being in a tampon commercial 20 years after he’s dead, a blunt, half-joking line that captured just how seriously actors are grappling with AI’s potential to misuse their likeness long after they’re gone.

Clooney didn’t treat the topic lightly beyond the joke itself. He said the film industry is going through a genuine revolution and that AI is going to become a very significant part of it, adding that he believes it’s going to hurt the industry in a lot of ways.

He pointed specifically to visual effects work as an area already feeling the strain, noting that people trying to break into that field are going to have a much harder time as AI continues to take over jobs traditionally handled by human artists. That concern extended into his broader worries about corporate consolidation, where he said big companies merging usually results in significant job losses across the industry.

Clooney’s AI comments came within a wider-ranging conversation that also touched on the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger directly. He described the situation as complicated, admitting he doesn’t know how it will play out or whether it will ultimately go through, while also acknowledging the labor concerns tied to that potential consolidation.

Beyond AI and the merger, Clooney didn’t hold back on American politics either, using the term “kakistocracy,” meaning a country run by the least qualified people, to describe his view of the current political climate, though he added that he believes the country will get through it. He also raised concerns about media ownership, criticizing the fact that some of the world’s richest individuals now control outlets like The Washington Post and X.

Journalism specifically resonated with Clooney given his own history directing 2005’s ‘Good Night, and Good Luck,’ a drama chronicling journalist Edward R. Murrow’s conflict with Senator Joseph McCarthy, a project he later adapted into a Broadway play that earned him a Tony nomination. He described the current state of journalism as being in question, tying his concerns about media consolidation directly back to who holds power over information today.

With Clooney set to receive his Golden Lion award later that evening alongside wife Amal Clooney, his opening day remarks made clear that even a career-honoring moment wasn’t going to keep him from addressing the issues he sees reshaping Hollywood and the world beyond it.

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