Yousra, Laila Elwi warn Gouna audience over AI’s risks

If you’ve asked an AI app to write your child’s school essay, plan a trip, or even suggest what to cook tonight, you already know how easily the technology has slipped into everyday routines here in Kuwait and across the region. That’s exactly the kind of quiet reliance two well-known Egyptian actresses say people need to think twice about.

Yousra and Laila Elwi shared a stage at the El Gouna Film Festival to talk about artificial intelligence, and their messages landed very differently. One urged caution. The other offered a far starker warning.

What Yousra actually said

Yousra’s point was less about fear and more about discipline. She stressed that anyone using AI tools needs to bring their own knowledge and judgement to the table, rather than accepting whatever the tool produces at face value.

Her advice was simple: check the sources, verify the accuracy, and don’t let the technology do your thinking for you. She was especially concerned about creative work. Writing scripts, shaping characters, generating ideas, these are areas where she believes human imagination still needs to lead, with AI staying firmly in a supporting role.

That’s a message that applies well beyond the film industry. Students using AI for assignments, professionals leaning on it for reports, or anyone treating a chatbot’s answer as gospel could take the same lesson from her comments.

Laila Elwi’s sharper warning

Where Yousra urged caution, Laila Elwi went further. Speaking at the same panel, she said plainly that she sees AI as something built with darker intentions, describing it as designed to “kill us and achieve its goal,” and claiming the aim would be to bring the world’s population down to around one billion people.

It’s a striking claim, and one that reflects a personal view rather than a documented plan or policy from any AI company or government. Still, it shows how deep the unease runs for some public figures who are watching the pace of AI development with real concern.

Elwi didn’t stop at adults. She pushed the conversation toward children, calling for age-based controls on internet access and social media use. Her reasoning was about limiting children’s exposure to harmful content online and helping them build the awareness needed to handle the digital world responsibly, rather than leaving them to navigate it unsupervised.

Why this matters beyond the festival stage

None of this changes any law or rule in Kuwait. But the themes raised at El Gouna echo conversations happening in households across the Gulf: how much should children be exposed to online, how much should anyone trust an AI-generated answer, and where does convenience turn into dependence.

Parents juggling screen time rules at home, teachers dealing with AI-written homework, and anyone who has caught themselves copying an AI summary without double-checking it will likely recognise the concerns both actresses raised, even if their tone differed sharply.

For readers who follow entertainment and cultural events from the region, this kind of debate is becoming a regular feature of film festivals, panels and public discussions, not just a niche tech conversation. You can find more of this coverage in our international news section.

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