Netflix is teaming up with Ben Affleck and leveraging the goodwill he’s earned with his views on AI to bring even more AI tools into filmmaking.
The streaming giant announced today that it has acquired Affleck’s filmmaking tech company, InterPositive, which the actor quietly founded in 2022 to develop AI-powered tools for filmmakers.
Netflix did not disclose the terms of the acquisition. But Variety reported that InterPositive’s 16-person team will join Netflix, with Affleck serving as a senior adviser. The company reportedly plans to offer InterPositive’s tools to its creative partners rather than selling commercial access to them.
In a press release, Affleck explained his motivation for founding InterPositive. He wrote that after spending time observing the early rise of AI in film production, many of the models fell short. So, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
“Together with a small team of engineers, researchers and creatives, I began filming a proprietary dataset on a controlled soundstage with all the familiarities of a full production,” Affleck said. “I wanted to build a workflow that captures what happens on a set, with vocabulary that matched the language cinematographers and directors already spoke and included the kind of consistency and controls they would expect.”
Affleck said the model was specifically trained to understand “visual logic and editorial consistency.”
In a video accompanying the announcement, Affleck emphasized that the tool is “not about text prompting or generating something from nothing.”
Instead, filmmakers can build their own model using their movie’s footage and then use it in post-production to make changes like removing stunt wires, creating missing shots, or adjusting backdrops, colors, and lighting.
The news is somewhat surprising after Affleck’s past comments expressing a more skeptical view of AI have gon viral. In particular, he has questioned AI’s ability to write, saying that “by its nature it goes to the mean, the average.”
“I don’t think it’s very likely that it’s gonna be able to write anything meaningful, or in particular, that it’s going to be making movies from whole cloth, like Tilly Norwood. That’s bullshit,” Affleck said on The Joe Rogan Podcast in January about AI, referencing the AI-generated actor. “Really, what it is, it’s going to be a tool just like visual effects.”
So it’s no surprise Netflix is tapping Affleck to help get filmmakers on the AI bandwagon.
The company said last year that it plans to expand its use of AI. In a letter to shareholders in October, Netflix wrote that it aims to focus on “empowering creators with a broad set of GenAI tools to help them achieve their visions.”
The company also highlighted some early examples of the technology in action. Netflix touted its use of de-aging AI in Happy Gilmore 2, and said the producers of Billionaires’ Bunker used AI tools to create concept art.
Even before that, Netflix announced in July that the Argentinian sci-fi series El Eternauta featured what the company described as the “very first GenAI final footage to appear on screen” in a Netflix show or film
With this new partnership, it’s pretty safe to assume that we’ll be seeing more AI show up in Netflix productions. Hopefully, Affleck can help prevent it from being too cringe.
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