Entertainment

Netflix and Ben Affleck are going into business together, with the streaming giant acquiring an AI tools company co-founded by the Cambridge native.

By Kevin Slane

March 5, 2026 | 2:00 PM

3 minutes to read

Less than a week after walking away from a deal to acquire Warner Bros., Netflix is making a different kind of acquisition — one involving Ben Affleck.

In a move that is sure to raise eyebrows in the creative community, Netflix announced on Thursday that it had acquired InterPositive, a company founded by Affleck that builds AI tools for use in the filmmaking process.

In a press release, Netflix said that InterPositive’s tools are designed to “protect and expand creative choice,” and that the tools will “serve storytellers and the creative process.”

Affleck, who recently starred in the Netflix movie “The Rip” alongside Matt Damon, differentiated the work that InterPositive does from AI tools like OpenAI’s Sora, which generate video from text-based prompts.

“AI, people mostly think of it as making something from nothing: ‘I’m gonna type something into a computer and it’s gonna give me a movie.’ That’s not what this is,” Affleck said during a conversation with Netflix executives Elizabeth Stone and Bela Bajaria.

According to Affleck, he and a team of “engineers, researchers and creatives” simulated a standard film production on a soundstage to build InterPositive’s first AI model, teaching it the language of film and how to handle frequent problems such as “missing shots, background replacements or incorrect lighting.”

The goal, Affleck said, was “creating tools that artists can use, control and benefit from.”

Ben Affleck’s views on AI

In 2022, Affleck and Matt Damon founded Artists Equity, a production company that distinguishes itself in part by sharing profits with every member of a film production, from the A-list stars down to the part-time production assistants.

Despite saying in Netflix’s press release that he began work on InterPositive the same year, Affleck has never publicly mentioned the company (or his involvement) before Netflix’s announcement Thursday morning.

Affleck has, however, frequently discussed his views on the use of AI in filmmaking during interviews, often garnering glowing headlines in the process.

During a 2024 appearance at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha summit, Affleck was widely lauded for saying that AI “cannot write you Shakespeare” and that “nothing new is created” by large language models.

But Affleck did make clear that even though he didn’t see AI as a “creative,” he did see AI as a “craftsman” able to do work typically handled by below the line employees.

“What AI is going to do is disintermediate the more laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow the costs to be brought down, that will lower the barrier to entry, that will allow more voices to be heard, that will make it easier for the people [who] want to make ‘Good Will Huntings’ to go out and make it,” he said.

More recently, during an appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Affleck said that he typically found the quality of writing produced by LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT to be “really s*****.”

But Affleck also said that he saw AI as a “tool” that could help in tasks like visual effects.

“If we don’t have to go to the North Pole — if we can shoot the scene here in our parkas or whatever it is — but then make it appear very realistically as if we’re at the North Pole, that’s going to save us a lot of money, a lot of time” Affleck told Rogan. “We’re going to focus on the performances and not freezing our asses off out there and running back inside. That’s useful.”

Representatives for Affleck had not responded to a request for comment from Boston.com at the time of this article’s publication.

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