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Ben Affleck Embraces AI?
These are just a few random Twitter reactions to the recent news of Netflix acquiring Ben Affleck’s AI company InterPositive. It’s indicative of how badly the boosters out there have degraded the idea of “AI,” in that any association with an AI product is seen as selling out or being “washed.”
With the proviso that I am only reading what the articles say and without any background information on InterPositive’s product, one can actually see the useful tool function being described here. It’s not Tilly Norwood-style grifting or tricking consumers into consuming slop or trying to automate a function at which AI tends to perform poorly.
Ben Affleck said InterPositive's technology helps filmmakers to build their own, proprietary AI models based on the scenes they've already shot, and then use that data to help solve otherwise laborious details.
"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," said the Oscar-winning director, producer, writer and actor, who has also joined Netflix as a senior advisor.
See, this sounds like an actually functional, useful tool in production. Only time and filmmaker use will bear it out, of course, but these seem like much more realistic features than what most of the AI “industry” promises for Hollywood.
As an amusing sidenote, I couldn’t help but be surprised at The Wrap’s InterPositive explainer, which expressed significantly more skepticism towards InterPositive than you typically find in the trades when writing about AI:
The AI startup world is littered with companies that overpromise and underdeliver. It remains to be seen whether InterPositive, which has been in stealth mode before its announcement last week, has a model powerful enough to actually enable these kinds of tools. Training a proper model takes time and an enormous amount of data — just look at the billions of dollars Google and OpenAI have poured into Gemini and ChatGPT, respectively (the InterPositive model would be far narrower in scope, however)…
The kinds of benefits that InterPositive touts aren’t as sexy as creating fist fights between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt out of nothing by simply typing a few words, but could save money at a time when all of the media companies are looking to cut costs. Even Netflix raised some eyebrows when projected spending $20 billion on content this year, up 10% from 2025.
The kinds of tools that InterPositive are touting could be a boon to Netflix, but the question remains: Can it actually deliver?
I’m all for this type of “let’s wait and see” approach to AI, and The Wrap tends to be one of the more incredulous trades on the topic. Perhaps Variety and The Hollywood Reporter might consider this approach before their 50th Tilly Norwood article!
Timothée Chalamet Is Right!
I didn’t mean for this to be a celebrity-driven edition of the newsletter. I promise I’m not doing clickbait! This is actually relevant.
Actor Timothée Chalamet ignited an entire social media firestorm over his comments on ballet and opera:
“And I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive.’ Even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership.”
This resulted in a predictable amount of performative outrage everywhere, many from people whose opera and ballet attendance receipts I would need to see before I take their opinion seriously. If your last time attending a ballet performance was The Nutcracker at Christmas when you were nine, maybe you are part of the problem!
Here’s the thing: Chalamet is correct. Ballet and opera are niche cultural artforms at this point. There’s no disrespect there, nobody is saying they don’t take years of dedication and practice, but they simply do not have broad cultural impact or presence.
Movies do… for now. But as I’ve described previously, tech’s increasing power and influence in Hollywood is slowly destroying the primacy of movies and moviegoing. As I wrote then:
The studios have allowed tech and media conglomerates to completely break their formerly-lucrative business model in order to chase fast cash, while also training the next generation of potential moviegoers to just stay home.
A perfect example is the upcoming Netflix release Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. The film’s director Greta Gerwig has just come off the massive theatrical blockbuster Barbie. Yet the new film is only getting a 2-week release exclusive to IMAX before heading to Netflix…
…future moviegoing consumers are grown by having early experiences attending movies in the theater. Continuing to erode the theatrical experience for short-term reasons will result in the films’ and filmgoing’s import continuing to decay.
Is this any different than what Chalamet is worried about? It isn’t.
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:
Seedance is getting hamstrung by copyright and compute. (link)
Delivering the VFX punchlines of The Naked Gun. (link)
Roku TV updates their home screen. (link)