Netflix just bought the AI company Ben Affleck apparently founded

Spurned by the realization that the streaming giant won’t be allowed to produce its own disappointing Batman movie, Netflix is soothing the burns of missing out on Warner Bros. by buying Batman’s AI company. Buried beneath the headlines of Ben Affleck’s relationship woes and Dunkin’ Donuts commercials, the Oscar-winning director of Argo co-founded an AI startup called InterPositive. Perhaps it was all that time spent staring out to sea as the world stared at that massive phoenix on his back, but Affleck realized, as he lays out in a press release about the acquisition, that he had “a responsibility to my peers and our industry, to protect the power of human creativity and the people behind it.” Affleck is protecting the sanctity of human performers by selling the company to Netflix for an undisclosed amount. The company already used AI to create a scene for the Argentine sci-fi series everyone’s talking about, The Eternaut, last summer.

Now a senior advisor at Netflix, Affleck basically says what all these AI company founders say: This is a tool that can make people’s lives easier—even though evidence from Harvard Business Review finds that AI makes the workday longer. Nevertheless, he continues: “Intensive research and development led to our first model, trained to understand visual logic and editorial consistency, while preserving cinematic rules under real-world production challenges such as missing shots, background replacements or incorrect lighting. We also built in restraints to protect creative intent, so the tools are designed for responsible exploration while keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists—and ensuring that the benefits of this technology flow directly back to the story they’re trying to tell.”