Ben Affleck is the latest star to air his thoughts on the use of AI in the movie industry, and the actor/director gave a candid take on how he believes it will be a long time before a machine can replicate the humanity of storytelling. While speaking to David Faber at the 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit (via Variety), Affleck spoke at length on the subject and shared his bold view that movies rely too much on human emotion and creativity to be replaced by AI.
The subject of AI use in movies, TV shows, and the world in general, is a daily discussion that continues to produce many opinions. For Affleck, there are many aspects of AI that “lower the barrier to entry” for people without studios’ millions, but ultimately, he sees it as an imitator, not a creator. He said:
“AI can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan. It cannot write you Shakespeare. The function of having two actors or three or four actors in a room and the taste to discern and construct… that is something that currently entirely alludes AI’s capability and I think will for a meaningful period of time.
What AI is going to do is 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 want to make ‘Good Will Huntings’ to go out and make it.”
Ben Affleck Says AI Cannot Learn When to Stop
While the worry of jobs being lost to the rise of AI technology is a very real concern for the future, Affleck doesn’t believe it is something that is going to replace very much of real filmmaking anytime soon. He continued his assessment by adding:
“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, large language models, basically work. They’re just cross-pollinating things that exist. Nothing new is created.
Craftsman is knowing how to work. Art is knowing when to stop. And I think knowing when to stop is going to be a very difficult thing for AI to learn because it’s taste, and also lack of consistency, lack of controls, lack of quality.”
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Affleck went on to use HBO series Succession as a way of pointing out the restrictions in AI’s ability to create something beyond that which has already been created by a person. He pointed out that the most AI can do is to rearrange what it is shown. He concluded:
“AI will allow you to ask for your own episode of ‘Succession’ where you could say, ‘I’ll pay you $30 and can you make me a 45-minute episode where like Kendall gets the company and runs off and has an affair with Stewy?’ and it’ll do it,” Affleck said. “And it will be a little janky and a little weird but it will know the sass and those actors and it will remix it in effect. That’s the value long-term.”
As Hollywood continues to try and work out how to integrate AI capabilities into the day-to-day workings of the industry without being seen to be taking away the jobs of long-term technicians, designers, and writers, for Affleck, at least, there will always be a place for humans in the movie industry. At least for the foreseeable future, anyway.