Entertainment07 October, 20262 min read
Ben Affleck Says AI Should Support Artists, Not Replace Creatives
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Affleck advocates using AI to assist artists rather than replace them. He demonstrated understanding of AI concepts like neural networks and model fine-tuning.
5 outlets told this the same way.
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Affleck’s AI filmmaking pitch
Ben Affleck went viral by explaining neural networks, tensors, and model fine-tuning with examples from cinematic production, while arguing that AI should be used with artists rather than to replace them. TechCrunch said Affleck told viewers, "I became more interested in that aspect of it, and the visual effects workflow for many years has included machine learning," as he defined terms like transformers and tensors. Affleck also said he can write "pretty shitty Python scripts and stuff like that," and he described a tensor as "just the numerical translation of a visual image, in numbers like the batch number, the frame number, the red, green, and blue values of each pixel in each frame."
Affleck said AI helped in the post-production of Animals, and he framed his concerns around educational and social effects rather than a scenario like Skynet. Affleck’s clips tied his interest to filmmaking’s shift from analog to digital, and he described how convolutional neural networks could recognize patterns, detect edges, and extract features from an image.
Netflix buys InterPositive
InterPositive, the cinematographic technology company founded by Affleck, became central to the story after Netflix acquired it. TechCrunch reported that the deal was for a reported $587 million, and Affleck questioned the figure while saying he did not own the whole company. Affleck said he gambled on building an ethical approach that could work "hand in glove with artists" by creating "our own dataset" for late-stage training of open models.
Affleck described the work as raising money and spending "about eight months" filming with "a lot of cameras and a lot of equipment" to create a dataset for discrete cinematic tasks. Affleck also said he fine-tuned open video models by unfreezing weights and training them to meet certain cinematic standards, while keeping the proprietary work with filmmakers.
AI worries and access
Affleck said he worries about "my kids in school" and "the 30% rise in the number of A’s given out at colleges over the last three years," while adding that he does not worry about Skynet and does not think it will take over the movie business.
“When I worry about AI, I worry about my kids in school.”
In the same set of clips, Affleck said he can call up top AI labs and ask to see what they are building, telling GQ’s One More Question series, "Hey, it's Ben Affleck. Can I come see what you're doing?"
Affleck said he learned that visual-effects artists told him Google and OpenAI were doing interesting work with transformers in video, and he used that to approach their teams directly.
Affleck described his early reaction to realistic AI video demos as calling Matt Damon and saying, "Dude, we're fuc*ed," and he said the panic lasted "a day or two."
Affleck said he saw a gap between engineers and filmmaking domain expertise, and he built InterPositive to train tools for cinematic tasks while keeping creative decisions with artists.