Since the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), there have been concerns over whether the technology will take over human-performed jobs in society. However, actor Ben Affleck says he is not concerned about it taking over Hollywood, saying “movies will be one of the last things, if everything gets replaced, to be replaced by AI.”
Last week, the actor spoke to co-anchor David Faber during an interview at the 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit, where he shared his thoughts on how AI will affect actors, writers, and the entertainment industry.
While Affleck sees issues in show business related to technology, AI is not at the forefront of his concerns. The actor sees AI’s role as a tool that can reduce costs in production, but maintains that human involvement in the creative process will remain essential for a long time.
“AI can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan—it cannot write you Shakespeare,” Affleck said.
He said that having a number of actors together, combined with their taste and discernment, is something that AI is incapable of, and will remain incapable of for a long time.
“What AI is going to do is … to disintermediate the laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking,” Affleck said. He believes that this will help reduce costs, lowering barriers to entry. “That will make it easier for the people that want to make ‘Good Will Hunting’s to go out and make it,” he said.
Affleck launched his start-up, “Artists Equity,” two years ago alongside his long-time friend and co-star Matt Damon and investor Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital. Affleck and Damon started the company with the goal of remaking the relationship between talent, studio, and distributor, to give artists more profit share, provide a platform for filmmakers, and optimize production.
Affleck says he views AI as “a craftsman at best”—a tool that can monitor an artist’s work and then reproduce it, but without the ability to create something new.
“Craftsmen can learn to make Stickley Furniture by sitting down next to somebody and seeing what their technique is and imitating,” Affleck said. “That’s how large video models, large language models, basically work.”
“They’re just cross-pollinating things that exist—nothing new is created,” he said.
“Craftsman is knowing how to work—art is knowing when to stop,” said Affleck. “Knowing when to stop is going to be a very difficult thing for AI to learn because it’s [about] taste.” He said he believes that questions of taste, consistency, control, and quality will see AI struggle to match the artist.
However, the actor noted that AI will disrupt some aspects of the filmmaking industry.
“I wouldn’t like to be in the visual effects business, they’re in trouble, because what costs a lot of money is now going to cost a lot less,” he said.
He said using AI will speed up the post-production aspects of a project, such as making the background more convincing or changing the color of an actor’s shirt, thereby assisting studios in releasing content more quickly.
Hollywood Voices
Other movie industry figures have also shared their views on how AI could impact the business in the future. In July, actor Nicolas Cage expressed his concerns in an interview with The New Yorker after getting two scans done for his projects.
“They have to put me in a computer and match my eye color,” said Cage. “I’m terrified of that. I’ve been very vocal about it,” he said.
“It makes me wonder, you know, where will the truth of the artists end up? … Where’s the heartbeat going to be?” he said. “What are you going to do with my body and my face when I’m dead? I don’t want you to do anything with it!”
Last year, renowned director and producer Steven Spielberg appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he voiced his opinion on AI and how it cannot replicate the human soul.
“It’s got me very nervous, because you’re basically taking something you created and you made, which is the computer, and giving the computer autonomy over your point of view and yourself as a human person,” Spielberg said.
“The soul is unimaginable and it’s ineffable, the soul, and it cannot be created by any algorithm,” he said. “It is just something that exists in all of us and to lose that because books and movies and music is being written by machines that we created and now we’re letting them run with that—that terrifies me.”