Ben Affleck’s AI Company Sold to Netflix for $587 Million
Ben Affleck recently defended the use of AI in his new movie Animals. He also sold his AI startup to Netflix for millions of dollars. Affleck said that with the startup, he aims to put an emphasis on human creativity. Netflix has already used AI on many of its titles.
Ben Affleck sold his AI company to Netflix
In March, Netflix announced it acquired Affleck’s filmmaking technology company, InterPositive. He founded the company in 2022. With it, he wants to “preserve what makes human storytelling human, which is judgement,” and “protect the power of human creativity.”
Affleck said InterPositive helps filmmakers with “real-world production challenges such as missing shots, background replacements or incorrect lighting” during post-production.
Per TechCrunch, Netflix recently revealed that it shelled out $587 million for InterPositive.
Ben Affleck said he used AI in his new movie ‘Animals’
Affleck used AI on his film Animals, which comes to Netflix this week. He said that he used it in a responsible way.
“I used [AI] for lots of things in that movie. I’m a little bit hesitant to point out what they are — or even talk about it — because in my business, we’re trying to foster the illusion of reality, right?” he said at Bloomberg‘s Screentime event (via The Hollywood Reporter). “But yes, we did use it, and in fact, I thought it was a good example (of how to use AI ethically) because it’s a very human movie.”
He said that his AI does not train itself on other people’s art.
“I wouldn’t use something that trains on or has learned from any work that is copywritten, or that is an intelligence created by a peer of mine or somebody that I look up to,” he said. “That was why we created a dataset that was proprietary, so that it wouldn’t have to be extractive.”
He also does not ever want to make a film “where you just type things, and things come out.”
“I don’t think that’s ever going to happen in a way that anyone’s going to give a s*** enough to want to see it,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to be part of it if it was. What I’m trying to do is actually bring this technology into our business, into a place where these companies who are guild signatories, who have relationships with the creative community, who aren’t going to just go ahead and put you in a movie without your permission and without paying you — that can’t be said for a lot of tech platforms and other spaces where we don’t just abjure this technology and allow others to take it and dominate it, and then weaken ourselves.”
He added that he is uncomfortable with the way that some tech companies use AI. He never wants to replace people with it.
