Netflix buys Ben Affleck’s AI film tech company, InterPositive

In 2022, Ben Affleck became so fixated on AI in film production that he quietly launched his own film tech company, InterPositive.

Netflix brought the startup into the spotlight Thursday morning as it announced the full acquisition of the company. InterPositive’s mission, which focuses on developing “AI-powered tools built by and for filmmakers” and using new technology to “protect and expand creative choice,” will now be exclusive to Netflix. In a news release, the streamer said it is “investing in creator-led innovation that keeps filmmakers at the center of the process.”

Netflix said it will bring on InterPostive’s entire team and keep Affleck as a senior advisor as part of the acquisition.

“The InterPositive team is joining Netflix because of our shared belief that innovation should empower storytellers, not replace them,” Elizabeth Stone, Netflix’s chief product and technology officer, said. “InterPositive’s impressive technology is purpose-built for filmmakers and showrunners to work with tools that naturally support their creative visions and how they want to bring them to life.”

Before founding his company, Affleck — best known for films like 2012’s “Argo,” “Pearl Harbor” (2001), and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” (2016) — said he noticed all the ways AI technology was falling short in the production space.

When launching InterPositive, the 53-year-old actor said he wanted to keep “storytelling human.” So he partnered with a group of engineers to develop a proprietary dataset on a controlled soundstage, similar to a full-fledged production, and began building its first AI model.

He said the model is “trained to understand visual logic and editorial consistency, while preserving cinematic rules under real-world production challenges like missing shots, background replacements or incorrect lighting,” all while “keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists.”

Affleck’s AI deal with Netflix comes at a time when much of Hollywood is critical of the technology, and skeptical of the larger companies in the space.

SAG-AFTRA, the actor’s union, of which Affleck is a member, is negotiating a new contract with major studios and proposing new AI provisions designed to protect human talent. A handful of Hollywood studios recently sent legal threats to Chinese tech company ByteDance over the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials in its new AI video platform, Seedance 2.0.