The Affleck brothers think AI will democratize filmmaking

Oh, brother (literally), we’ve got both Afflecks shilling for AI this week. The topic is extremely controversial—in general, but particularly among artists, who are concerned that artificial intelligence will push out true human creativity for soulless slop. But in the eyes of Casey and Ben Affleck, these tools will help make creativity accessible to everyone. 

Casey just recently partnered with Blumhouse and Meta to test out Meta’s new tool Movie Gen. At a recent event, he told IndieWire, “It’s an opportunity for people who wouldn’t ordinarily get their hands on the resources to do certain things that you can do with movies to create worlds that are far away or super imaginative, that would be very expensive.” (Whether this is how Casey actually feels about it or if he’s just repeating the Meta party line is unclear, given this is more or less word-for-word how the company is promoting Movie Gen. Maybe both!) 

Casey added that the technology would certainly need “guardrails” but that he’s “excited” by its potential, and “everyone’s going to discover that they can do new things with it and they’ll be less afraid of it.” He said, “I think as soon as these tools become available to everybody, you’re going to see all these people that didn’t have access to the five studio heads and all of their big budgets, be able to make incredibly imaginative, world building movies, features, and shorts. It was a lot of fun.”

Meanwhile, his brother Ben appeared at the CNBC Delivering Alpha summit and suggested that one “long-term” value of AI is that it could help you create and watch homoerotic Succession fanfiction (no, really). Ben doesn’t see AI developing the “taste to discern and construct” that actors have “for a meaningful period of time,” but he does think the tech will “dis-intermediate the more laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow 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 (via IndieWire). “Look, AI is a craftsman at best. Craftsmen can learn to make Stickley Furniture by sitting down next to somebody and seeing what their technique is and imitating. That’s how large video models and large language models basically work. Library of vectors of meaning and transformers that interpret it in context, right? But they’re just cross-pollinating things that exist. Nothing new is created.”

Much like his brother, Ben sees AI as “empowering the creators,” while additionally “creating new streams of revenue” and “potentially forging partnerships between Hollywood and Silicon Valley that haven’t been able to be made historically.” Because that’s what Hollywood has been missing: more tech bros! The algorithm’s gonna love this!

Brothers like the Afflecks and Russos may be right about the inevitability of AI in Hollywood, but there are also still a lot of good reasons to be hesitant about widespread AI adoption. This writer tends to go for the Ayo Edebiri school of thought. The Bear star recently shared a post about the outsize environmental impact of artificial intelligence on Instagram, writing, “pls stop using AI to see what you’d look like as a sexy Sims character or whatever—you can commission some talented and horny freak to do it for like $6 or idk, also use your imagination. You’d look like you but smaller—there, I did it. This shit is cooking the planet!!!! And our brains!!!!” Hear that, Ben? There’s plenty of talented writers who can write your Kendall/Stewy fanfic for you. Why don’t we just leave AI out of it for now.