‘AI Has No Recollection Of The ’70s’: Jodie Foster Takes A Dig At Chatbots

Jodie Foster has a bone to pick with artificial intelligence and it’s personal. The Oscar-winning actor recently poked fun at AI tools for conveniently erasing one of her most memorable early roles, calling out how technology seems to have completely skipped over the 1970s.

In an interview with Variety, the 63-year-old actor-filmmaker revealed that AI platforms fail to acknowledge her role in Freaky Friday, where she played the original Annabel. Pointing to popular AI chat tools, Foster said, “You know who forgets that I was the original Annabel in Freaky Friday? If you go on to ChatGPT, or any of those things, and you say, like, ‘Hey, what are the Freaky Friday movies?’ They say there was an original, which is the ‘original’ with Jamie Lee Curtis,

and then there’s the second one that just came out. And they don’t mention me!”

She didn’t stop there, adding with dry humour that, according to AI, her film doesn’t even seem to exist. “AI has no recollection of the ’70s,” Foster quipped.

Foster starred in the 1976 adaptation of Freaky Friday, which was based on Mary Rodgers’ 1972 children’s novel of the same name. The story later found renewed popularity decades later when it was remade by Mean Girls director Mark Waters in 2003, featuring Lindsay Lohan in a role inspired by Foster’s character and Jamie Lee Curtis stepping into the part originally played by Barbara Harris.

Despite her lasting association with the franchise, Foster chose not to revisit it for its upcoming sequel. In April last year, Freakier Friday director Nisha Ganatra told Entertainment Weekly that she had repeatedly tried to persuade Foster to make a cameo appearance. However, the actor turned down the offer. Ganatra admitted she never received a clear explanation, saying she “never found out why, we tried everything.”