After Ben Affleck made some news this week when he spoke about using AI on his new movie Animals, and now he’s going deeper on his approach to use the technology in a responsible way.
Affleck first spoke about Animals’ use of AI at Bloomberg‘s Screentime event on Wednesday, saying, “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 added, “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.”
At the Netflix film‘s premiere on Thursday, Affleck told The Hollywood Reporter that his approach to AI is “really simple, 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. That was why we created a dataset that was proprietary, so that it wouldn’t have to be extractive.”
He continued that he’s not at all interested in making movies “where you just type things and things come out” because “I don’t think that’s ever going to happen in a way that anyone’s going to give a shit enough to want to see it. 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.”
“I’m already uncomfortable with some of the ways some tech companies behave around image and likeness, and I feel that actually, as my thesis and what was borne out was, if you give this to people who actually make films, you’re going to get way better results. And we have, and we did,” Affleck explained. “And like at Netflix, it’s like, ‘Hey, do you want to use this? Do you want to try this?’ This is a discrete set of tools. It’s not about making fake people or replacing anybody, ever. It’s about another interesting post tool, and if you can see it or if you can tell what it is, like, you’ve ruined it. Just like a bad visual effect, just like a bad performance.”
The star has been quietly working in the AI space for several years now, and earlier in 2026 Affleck sold his AI company InterPositive to Netflix for nearly $600 million. He directed, co-wrote and stars in Animals, which follows a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped and he and his wife (Kerry Washington) get their hands dirty to come up with the ransom.
In his lengthy red carpet chat with THR, Affleck emphasized “we do have an issue in Hollywood. It’s not AI, it’s never actually going to be able to do this, in my view,” instead pointing to problems of theatrical attendance, labor stoppages and production tax rebates. He also pointed to his and Matt Damon’s company Artists Equity and the belief that “in success, everybody is compensated in a very clear way.”
He said InterPositive is of the same philosophy, and “if you are a director or an actor and you are contributing something that’s your art, then yes, if you choose to use this technology to train from that, you avail yourself of that intelligence. You don’t have to give it to the rest of the world. They are not entitled to that, but you can use the technology if everyone else uses it. If you choose, if you feel that it helps your film in one way or another, and there are places where it does.”
Affleck added that “the truth about AI that people don’t talk about is it’s like deeply and fundamentally limited in a lot of ways. It’s not magic. It’s not super intelligence. It’s not sentient. That’s just old bullshit. And eventually, we’ll look back and be like, ‘Remember when people were going around saying it was going to be Terminator and these machines were geniuses?’”
Animals hits select theaters and starts streaming on Netflix Oct. 9.
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