Emily Blunt compares AI to 'having a drug dealer in your house'

NEW YORK – “The Devil Wears Prada 2” has all the biting jokes and mind-blowing fashion you loved from the first movie.

But two decades on, the sequel (in theaters May 1) arrives in an extremely different landscape, which has forced media companies to tighten their belts as page views plummet and AI surges.

The film thoughtfully reckons with the explosion of AI and how it affects the staff of the fictional Runway magazine in the movie.

“There are so many challenges, so many concerns and fears,” says Emily Blunt, whose Emily Charlton leaves the crumbling media business for a corporate fashion position. “I do think that the film is able to capture what's going on, and the siege that journalism is coming under. I think it’s really poignant.”

Midway through “Prada 2,” a potential new CEO suggests Runway will no longer need models and exotic locales for photo shoots when fashion spreads can all be generated through AI. He compares artificial intelligence to volcanic lava that we’ll all get swept up in eventually.

But Hollywood talent such as Blunt, 43, is pushing back, particularly in how she chooses to raise her kids with her husband, John Krasinski. They share two daughters: Hazel, 12, and Violet, 9.

The world of AI is “a very scary bubble to poke your head inside,” says Blunt, who has no known social media of her own. “My children don’t go online, and they’re young still. You’re kind of holding on to them by their ankles as they get older and want more independence.

At some point, I’m sure they’ll want a phone – they’d probably like one now and they’re not going to get one. It’s like having a drug dealer in your house that doesn’t pay rent or actually give you any of the good stuff,” she says, laughing.

Jokes aside, “we’re trying to instill them with a sense of togetherness and family and creativity, and trying to hold on to that for as long as possible,” Blunt says. “But I do think people are getting wise to it. Schools are getting wise to it. There's a no-phone policy in the school my kids are going to, just to give children at least seven, eight hours a day where they have to just be present and focus and use their brains and be bored and converse.

“The headmaster said that [after] they took the phones away, the cafeteria is noisy again. Kids are talking.”

In 2023, the Writers Guild of America went on a monthslong strike, which helped secure assurances that Hollywood studios can’t use AI-generated scripts as source material, nor credit AI as writers.  

But “Prada 2” star Stanley Tucci still worries about how people’s likenesses are manipulated and transformed into AI deepfakes. It’s a conversation he has frequently with his wife, literary agent Felicity Blunt, who is also Emily’s sister.

“A lot of the time I don't know what's real and what's not real anymore, so it's better never to go on Instagram,” Tucci says. “It's strange that way. I mean, my wife is a literary agent, and she said AI is just killing everything. You can [use it to] write books. Authors are going to suffer horribly. Journalists will suffer horribly ‒ and screenwriters. Soon we won't be able to tell what's what. That is really, really, really disconcerting.”

At some point, “I know I’m going to have all these digital images taken of me so that I can preserve my – whatever this is – for the future,” Tucci says, motioning to his body. “Then I will own myself, and if somebody wants to turn me into something and I’m not around anymore, then my family will get the money. Because it’s only fair.

“It’s weird,” he adds with a shrug. “It’s kind of creepy.”