A company founded by Ben Affleck has recently announced it was acquired by Netflix. Bethany Mollenkof/Netflix © 2026 Enhancing AI protections for actors has been a centerpiece of the ongoing negotiations between the leaders of SAG-AFTRA and the studios and streamers, which made Thursday’s announcement that one of SAG-AFTRA’s most prominent members had not only developed an AI-powered filmmaking technology, but had sold it to the most powerful company in Hollywood that much more head scratching.
On Thursday, Netflix announced that it had acquired InterPositive, a company that Oscar-winner Ben Affleck had quietly founded a few years ago. Little is known about InterPositive’s technology other than what Affleck shared in a video in which he fields softball questions from Netflix’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria and the streamer’s chief technology officer, Elizabeth Stone.
In the video and in a press release Affleck stresses that his aim was to protect Hollywood’s creative community. “I knew I had a responsibility to my peers and our industry, to protect the power of human creativity and the people behind it. In creating InterPositive, I sought to do just that,” he writes. But who exactly is protected in all of this?
Ben Affleck stressed his aim was to protect Hollywood’s creative community in a press release. Bethany Mollenkof/Netflix © 2026 Affleck would appear to be protecting filmmakers and actors, but at the expense of below-the-line workers, such as visual effects artists — many of whom have complained in recent years about working conditions in the streaming era. For Affleck, that would be consistent with comments he has made in the past. “I wouldn’t like to be in the VFX business, they’re in trouble. Because what cost a lot of money, now will cost a lot less,” Affleck said during a 2024 CNBC summit. “And maybe it shouldn’t take a thousand people to render something.” The point here isn’t to vilify Affleck, who along with his Artists’ Equity partner Matt Damon pushed for a deal that would reward their crew on Netflix’s ‘The Rip’ with bonuses if the film hit certain streaming benchmarks, which it did. (Earlier this week, they signed a more expansive first-look deal with the streaming giant.)
He’s also not the only Hollywood player dipping their toes into AI as a way to help improve conditions for filmmakers. Darren Aronofsky launched his own AI studio, Primordial Soup, as did Natasha Lyonne who co-founded Asteria Films, an AI production studio, with Bryn Mooser. Joe and Anthony Russo’s production shingle AGBO has their own in-house R&D lab where they develop technology alongside filmmakers, including AI and James Cameron went from AI-skeptic to joining the board of Stability AI.
Affleck is however the first to sell his company.
The point here is that the continued advancement of AI in the entertainment industry is creating all sorts of moral ambiguities. The lines of what side various constituencies sit on when it comes to AI are anything but straight. In fact they are starting to look quite crooked.
Reps for Screen Actors Guild and IATSE, which added a VFX wing in 2023, declined to comment.
