While there are plenty of filmmakers out there who don't want AI within a 100-foot radius of any of their creations, some are intrigued to see how the technology can help them make movies. Ben Affleck's new start-up, InterPositive, looks to make some of these tools and connect them with filmmakers.
Netflix seems to think it's a good idea, as they've gone ahead and bought the start-up. In what Variety terms a rare acquisition, the entire team at InterPositive will be brought under the Netflix umbrella, with Affleck serving as a senior advisor to provide guidance to the streamer.
Currently, the plan is to keep InterPositive's technology off the marketplace, allowing Netflix's creative teams to use it internally. Terms and figures involved in the acquisition have not been disclosed. This comes weeks after the Netflix deal with Warner Bros. turned sour, and just a week after it was officially confirmed that Paramount would instead be making the historic media buyout.
"In 2022, I spent a lot of time observing the early rise of AI in production," Affleck said in a statement. "As a filmmaker, I could see how these models came up short. For artists to apply these tools towards telling the stories we dedicate our lives to, they need to be purpose-built to represent and protect all the qualities that make a great story: the nuances of filmmaking, the predictable — and unpredictable — challenges of production environments, the distortion of a lens or the way light shape-shifts across a scene."
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"We also need to preserve what makes storytelling human, which is judgment. The kind that takes decades to build, experience to hone and that only people can have. I knew I had a responsibility to my peers and our industry, to protect the power of human creativity and the people behind it," he continued.