Netflix buys Ben Affleck’s AI startup

Just days after abandoning its planned Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition, Netflix is back with a very different kind of deal: The streaming giant has acquired InterPositive, a startup founded by actor and director Ben Affleck that is developing AI tools for filmmakers. InterPositive’s entire team will join Netflix as part of the acquisition, and Affleck himself will become an advisor to the streamer. Financial details of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Affleck founded InterPositive in 2022 after realizing that existing AI video models weren’t ready to produce Hollywood-grade footage from scratch. “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,” he says.

With the help of this training data, InterPositive then developed its own video model, optimized for use in real-world production environments. “We also built in restraints to protect creative intent, so the tools are designed for responsible exploration while keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists,” Affleck says.

InterPositive has been operating in stealth until today, and a Netflix spokesperson declined to share details about the company’s staff. However, a bit of digging revealed that InterPositive was originally incorporated as Fin Bone LLC, an entity that has applied for a number of patents related to AI filmmaking tools in the U.S. and overseas. (Those patents credit Affleck as the inventor.)

A common refrain in those applications is that existing AI video models focus entirely on the final visual output, and not on the way cinematographers traditionally construct individual shots—a sentiment echoed by Affleck in a video Netflix published Thursday morning in conjunction with the announcement.  “People mostly think of [AI] as making something from nothing,” Affleck says in the video. “I gotta type something into a computer, and it’s gonna give me a movie. That’s not what this is.”

Instead of prompting visuals from scratch, InterPositive’s technology requires filmmakers to shoot much of their raw footage first. That footage is then used to train a custom AI model, which can in turn help with common post-production issues. “You can use your own model to remove the wires on stunts, reframe a shot, get a shot you missed, shape the lighting, enhance the backgrounds,” Affleck says.

Generative AI has been controversial in Hollywood. Actors and labor unions have been highly critical of the technology, fearing that studios might use it to replace human labor with cheap automation. “I understand the skepticism because I share it,” says Affleck, adding that he was scared the first time he saw generative AI in action. However, the actor-director also argues that it’s important for the film industry not to remain on the sidelines: “I was worried that this was a technology that was going to grow outside of the ecosystem of filmmakers and artists.”

Netflix has publicly acknowledged the use of AI for some of its productions, including to create visual effects in its sci-fi show The Eternaut, and to make actors of the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore 2 look younger in a flashback scene. The company has also published guidelines on how production partners can and cannot use AI for Netflix content.

“We’ve been working with [machine learning] and AI for a long time, but always in service of responsible use of technology, versus technology for technology’s sake,” says Netflix chief product and technology officer Elizabeth Stone.

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