- Joseph Gordon-Levitt expressed concerns about AI's impact at the Utah AI Summit.
- He emphasized the need for regulation, especially regarding AI chatbots and children's safety.
- Gordon-Levitt commended Utah for leading in consumer data protection initiatives, among others.
SALT LAKE CITY — Joseph Gordon-Levitt felt well-positioned to speak up about concerns he had with the risks of artificial intelligence during its rise to mainstream prominence. The actor founded a company called HITRECORD.
"I had a bit of a head start from some of my peers in Hollywood," Gordon-Levitt said Tuesday during the 2025 Utah AI Summit in Salt Lake City.
Beyond being an Emmy-winning and Golden Globe-nominated actor who's starred in such films as "Inception" and "The Dark Knight Rises," a filmmaker, and entrepreneur, Gordon-Levitt is also a father of two young children.
His fatherhood and his industry background, he said, compelled him to voice his concerns.
"I actually remain an optimist through all my concerns, and I'm excited about what the technology could potentially do for me, my generation and for my kids' generation," Gordon-Levitt said. "But I am worried that if we go down the path of least resistance, and we allow this technology to unfold purely driven by profit incentives, without any other guardrails, I'm worried it could do more harm than good, and in particular to kids, and my kids. That worries me, and it sort of galvanized me to be speaking about it."
Gordon-Levitt said he's in favor of the government getting involved with laws and guidelines when it comes to AI regulation, specifically as it relates to AI chatbots.
While he doesn't think the government should be "telling companies how to develop technologies," Utah Gov. Spencer Cox agrees with Gordon-Levitt's pleas for regulation in the instance of chatbots.
"The government should not be regulating the development of AI, but the minute you decide to use those tools to give my kid a sexualized chatbot, then it's my business, and it's the government's business, and we are going to get involved, and we are going to tell you what you can and can't do," Cox said during a different panel earlier Tuesday.
Gordon-Levitt, in September, was featured in a New York Times opinion video discussing the dangers Meta's AI chatbot poses to kids and directly contesting claims made by Meta CEO and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Zuckerberg has a vision for how A.I. could be used in Meta's universe.
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) September 30, 2025
But the actor and filmmaker Joseph Gordon-Levitt is here to point out a flaw in the technology: an apparent lack of guardrails around how the company's chatbot interacts with underage users.… pic.twitter.com/NIPDV32rPr
In the video, Gordon-Levitt cites the leak of an internal Meta document detailing policies on chatbot behavior that has permitted the company's artificial intelligence creations to "engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual," among other things.
"The language is shocking. It's shockingly erotic, the way that this company is trying to create this synthetic intimacy to hook young users. Ultimately, what's the business of Meta? It's an advertising business," Gordon-Levitt said. "The more attention they can keep, the more money they can make. And what's a great way to get your attention is to sort of form a relationship with the users. And that's what these AI companions are clearly designed to do."
But it also goes deeper than that, with Gordon-Levitt saying chatbots risk the "bedrock of any civilization" in human relationships.
While human/chatbot interactions are primarily via text, he said it won't be long before they're "photo-real video."
"If a person's idea of conversation — of a relationship — is formed through interactions with these chatbots, we're headed for a civilization of people lacking empathy, lacking perspective (and) lacking the ability to really have a human relationship. And where is our civilization at that point? I feel like it could get really dark," Gordon-Levitt said.
Gordon-Levitt commended Utah for leading the way when it comes to protecting consumer data, notably through the state's Minor Protection in Social Media Act, even though the state is facing lawsuits preventing the law from being enacted.
Under the law, social media companies would have been required to enable the maximum default privacy settings on Utah children's accounts. The companies would have had to verify the ages of their users and also restrict the visibility of Utah children's accounts, including by disabling search engine indexing.
This is what's great about the United States of America, that we don't have kings and that anybody is able to own their land and do their world work and come up. So we need sort of a revolution online, the way that the American Revolution revolutionized things, back 250 years ago
– Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Additionally, Utah Department of Commerce Executive Director Margaret Busse highlighted the passage of HB418 and the Utah Digital Choice Act, which gives users control over their data that they're putting into social media platforms.
Busse said this not only gives the user more control, but it also creates more competition in the social media space, something Gordon-Levitt said is needed.
"Nowadays, in the digital world, data and content is becoming as valuable as land in a certain way. Where all the money comes from is in this brokering of data and content. All of us people generate all this data and content and don't own any of it. It's all owned by a very small number of very powerful companies," Gordon-Levitt said.
He likened it to times of feudalism, when kings owned all the land, and the people who lived and worked on that land didn't own any of it.
"The digital world should be more like our world today. This is what's great about the United States of America, that we don't have kings and that anybody is able to own their land and do their world work and come up. So we need sort of a revolution online, the way that the American Revolution revolutionized things, back 250 years ago," Gordon-Levitt said.
