Last year, Reese Witherspoon came in for some criticism. There was significant backlash to some comments she made in a magazine interview. Regarding AI, Reese said in part: “It’s so, so important that women are involved in AI because it will be the future of filmmaking. And you can be sad and lament it all you want, but the change is here.” Keep in mind, her union (SAG-AFTRA) had recently gone on strike and fought a huge battle with Hollywood to limit the use of AI in filmmaking, citing the need to hire actual flesh-and-blood actors. Reese came across as sort of blithely tone-deaf at best. Well, Reese is doubling-down.
Reese Witherspoon is again advising her followers that there’s no time like the present to start learning about and using artificial intelligence in their daily lives and workplaces.
“The Morning Show” star posted on Instagram Wednesday doubling down on earlier remarks that women need to become familiar with AI tools.
“Well…I’ve decided it’s TIME,” she wrote. “The AI revolution has begun, and I need to learn as much as I possibly can about AI and share it with all of you. Also, FYI: the jobs women hold are 3x more likely to be automated by AI, yet women are using AI at a rate 25% lower than men on average. We don’t want to be left behind. So…do you want to learn with me?”
Actress Kerry Washington commented on the post, writing, “THIS” in agreement. But other commenters were not as upbeat, pointing out their concerns about the environmental impact of the technology and the impact of data centers on communities.
Some commenters speculated that her upbeat advice sounded like it must be some sort of launch for a company or service utilizing AI.
It absolutely sounds like Reese is about to launch something related to or reliant on AI. Her post sounds like an advertisement or incipient spon-con. Reese is crazy-rich now, having sold her production company, Hello Sunshine, for $900 million five years ago. She sounds like every other bored rich person trying to sell the worker bees on the AI scam: “you too can help build the thing which will kill your jobs and cripple the economy, ladies!” An underrated consequence of Reese’s argument is that as soon as women embrace AI and try to work in AI, the misogynist tech bros will be furious about it and suddenly AI will be “over.” “It’s icky now that women are part of this industry, AI girl cooties!”
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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- Apple TV+ Emmy Party Red Carpet at the Mother Wolf on September 15, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA,Image: 908298675, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Reese Witherspoon, Credit line: Nicky Nelson/Wenn/Avalon
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- WEST HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – FEBRUARY 12: Reese Witherspoon arrives at Apple TV+’s ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Season 2 Tastemaker Event held at The West Hollywood EDITION on February 12, 2026 in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 1074627739, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Reese Witherspoon, Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
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- WEST HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – FEBRUARY 12: Reese Witherspoon arrives at Apple TV+’s ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Season 2 Tastemaker Event held at The West Hollywood EDITION on February 12, 2026 in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 1074627988, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Reese Witherspoon, Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
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- New York Screening Of ‘You’re Cordially Invited’ At Jazz At Lincoln centre Featuring: Reese Witherspoon Where: United States When: 29 Jan 2025 Credit: Darla Khazei/INSTARimages
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- Reese Witherspoon on ‘Good Morning America’ to talk about new movie ‘You’re Cordially Invited’ Featuring: Reese Witherspoon Where: New York, United States When: 29 Jan 2025 Credit: Roger Wong/INSTARimages
She’s found a way to make money. We know who she is.
She’s invested in something AI related. Ef off, trick.
AI is currently on a bit of a downswing, with younger people weaning themselves off it, and companies a lot less enthused about investing in it. I think the bubble is about to burst, and celebrities buying into it is actually a good sign of this. NFTs were all the rage until actors started trying to hop on the bandwagon, then the arse fell out of it. I remember brie larson in particular.
All of this is true, however, the underground AI – IT scene knows that the new AI generation upon us is unbelievable and has nothing to do with chatgpt stuff, so..
Laalaa, I want to hear more. Pleeeasee!
“…as soon as women embrace AI and try to work in AI, the misogynist tech bros will be furious about it and suddenly AI will be ‘over.'”
If only it were that easy.
Reese is a very thirsty woman. I read this as her trying to stay relevant in an industry that most women age out at 26. She absolutely doesn’t need the money, but loves to be front and center.
AI is all very well for Reese (and Kerry) they will get paid for their image and/or be investors. It’s everyone behind the scenes that will be losing their job.
It’s nearly a copy and paste of what she said about NFTs, and we all know how that turned out.
“As I got more educated about NFTs I realized there’s just so much opportunity for women to own their own work,” Witherspoon tells nft now. “I think it’s really important as new worlds are being built that we bring consciousness to female creators and female entrepreneurs that is an opportunity to own your work in perpetuity.”
I’m not taking advice from Reese on anything except acting.
Yeah, I think Reese “do you know who I am” Witherspoon is just a thirsty ninny.
I saw her cookbook in a thrift store and she tells you to wash raw chicken! 🙀
I don’t know what it is but I don’t trust her.
Honestly…. I really think she has a point with this one. There are many articles out there now that explain research which forecasts that AI enabled technology will reduce existing jobs by about 30% starting with lower skilled positions. There will be new jobs, but it will require the ability to assess and oversee workflows that are being run by AI. (McKinsey has some good resources if you are interested).
For much of corporate America, I believe that leveraging AI technology will become table stakes. I not necessarily a fan of Reese, or AI, but she has a point. Greed means companies are constantly trying to become more efficient and AI looks like a viable path to achieve that. She may genuinely want to help women maintain viable skills sets so they can stay relevant in the talent market of the future.
“You gotta learn AI or get left behind!” is a bit galling given that the entire purpose of AI seems to be to steal our work and make us lose critical thinking skills and ruin rhe planet, which is to say, its GOAL is to leave us all behind. That, in order to make its owners rich. Hard pass.
THIS^^^
She’s right. I’m quite well placed in the software industry. Those who embrace this change are being kept; those that aren’t are being cut loose. It’s changing everything! It’s like being in the middle of a new Industrial Revolution. It’s extremely exciting and challenging in so many ways -professionally, ethically, more. The next iterations are already past development and are in beta. It’s really quite thrilling and very complex.
The internal combustible engine had a far more sweeping influence that led to a completely reimagined future than AI ever will and it created jobs instead of eliminating them.
It’s very interesting from a bird’s eye and sociological/philosophical point of view. But telling people to “embrace it” is like Joe Biden telling 50-year old coal miners they should go to college and learn how to code. And what does “embracing AI” even mean? It’s not like there’s a choice with technological changes – what will happen will happen and the best we can hope for is what people call a “just transition.”
She has been openly insufferable for decades. She showed who she was during the DUI arrest and that should have ended her career then and there. The AI bubble is going to burst because the people behind it are the worst of humanity and the rest of us are going to end up holding the bag when they crash the economy and destroy the environment. End stage capitalism is just the worst.
She really is so gross for this.
Oh well, if SHE’S decided it’s TIME, then who am I to argue?
This is quite clearly a grift.
As for the substance of what she’s saying, LLMs are a plague and there are vanishingly few (if any) ethical uses for them. I have no doubt, though, that much like there were winners of the Dotcom bubble, a few next gen AI-based companies will survive and usher in something more refined and useful. Technology doesn’t go backwards. But if we fail to put guardrails on them, these companies will continue to steal human work, destroy the environment, decimate communities, and cause great harm to all but a few.
She got DRAGGED on Threads and I hope she continues to get dragged. Women’s jobs are being ELIMINATED because of AI. And to be so glib about the environmental, legal and moral issues surrounding AI is not only tone deaf but also shows a lack of understanding of the topic. And this whole idea that AI is inevitable is just gaslighting. ChatGPT has only been around 3 years.
Ugh. She’s clearly drank the kool-aid.
Per mElon Musk during one of his tech talks -except u can’t really call them speeches bc he’s rarely able to complete a coherent sentence. Anyway he said “no one will have to work bc AI will replace all of the jobs and we’ll all be rich!” Except he didn’t clarify who constitutes “we”. I immediately thought – if no ones working, how are people supposed to support themselves and their families? No mention of health insurance either. This A-hole and DOGE fired hundreds of thousands of federal employees, The Felon is cancelling numerous business and state grants and contracts who already been allocated those funds by Congress, he’s suing the IRS for $10B (Our DOJ already settled with him, last yr iirc), the Felon & his Repub minions in Congress are actively destroying all of our social safety nets, individual and employee rights are constantly being attacked on state and federal levels, with some laws overturned, AI data centers are filling local communities with a putrid stench/driving up residents’ electric bills/using enormous amounts of local water & causing those residents to become severely ill (check out Memphis, TN for those reports). Last week the Felon said that “we can’t afford childcare, Medicaid, Medicare and other programs bc we have to pay for wars and other things. And he wants Congress to give him an extra one and a half Trillion Dollars ! We could have used the $1BILLION/daily costing the taxpayers for this illegal war in Iran on ALL of the above programs and then some. These soulless morons disgust me.
Thank you.
We always want the AI conversation to center around AI’s innovative implications but we never want to talk about the environmental effects and how completely unsustainable it is when not paired with an aggressive pursuit of clean energy sources. These data centers are destroying neighborhoods because LLMs require massive amounts of energy to operate. Meanwhile, our utility bills are increasing. Once again, the working class shoulders the financial and environmental burden while the tech oligarchs get richer.
Don’t forget, she went in hard on NFTs too —