Can Ben Affleck Lead Hollywood’s Embrace of AI?
Flux.2 Pro: Curt Doty
By Roger Cheng, The Wrap
For many in the entertainment industry, artificial intelligence is a boogeyman poised to steal the soul of Hollywood. But Netflix and Ben Affleck have seemingly found a way to embrace the technology without freaking everyone out.
Netflix on Thursday acquired Affleck’s InterPositive, which said it provides AI tools for video post-production, for an undisclosed sum. The startup said it built its own model using footage it shot itself, training the algorithm to think like a filmmaker or editor. Other creatives can then feed dailies into the model, creating a “mini-model” that’s optimized specifically for that film or show. It specializes in post-production fixes like adding missing shots, correcting lighting or enhancing backgrounds.
One thing it doesn’t do, as Netflix was keen to point out, was to generate whole scenes or even actors through a simple written prompt, the kind of nightmare scenario we’ve seen play out with scary-real video AI models like ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0.
