Netflix has acquired InterPositive, a startup founded by Ben Affleck that makes AI-powered tools for filmmakers. The announcement comes as Hollywood grapples with how to integrate artificial intelligence into creative work without triggering justified concerns about job displacement and creative dilution. Netflix's approach here is worth scrutinising, because it reveals something important about the emerging consensus on how technology should be deployed in the entertainment industry.
On the surface, the acquisition looks like Netflix positioning itself for efficiency gains. The L.A.-based AI company was quietly launched by Affleck in 2022 and its entire 16-person team of engineers, researchers, and creatives will join Netflix. Netflix will offer access to InterPositive's tech to its creative partners and does not have plans to sell it commercially in the marketplace. That last detail matters. By keeping the technology proprietary rather than commercialising it, Netflix is making a statement about what this tool is meant to do: serve the streamer's own production agenda.
But here is where conventional wisdom about AI automation breaks down. The company has created a model that helps production teams work with footage from their own productions to help make edits in post-production. This is not labour replacement in the crude sense. InterPositive's model is trained solely on dailies from a specific film or television production to ensure the output is relevant, and the tools can be used on any live-action film or TV show during the production or post-production process to address challenges such as replacing missing shots, reframing existing shots, correcting lighting and replacing or enhancing backgrounds. In other words, the technology works backwards from raw material filmmakers have already created.
Affleck himself has been remarkably articulate about this distinction. "AI, people mostly think of it as making something from nothing: 'I'm gonna type something into a computer and it's gonna give me a movie.' That's not what this is," Affleck said during a conversation with Netflix executives Elizabeth Stone and Bela Bajaria. What InterPositive does is remove the tedious labour from production workflows, leaving creative decision-making to human judgment. Strip away the hype and you have a tools company, not a replacement company.
The wider implication deserves attention. Netflix has already used generative AI for special effects in some original content and has assured investors that it is "very well positioned to effectively leverage ongoing advances in AI." Yet Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has already publicly stated that there's a bigger business in making content 10% better than making it 50% cheaper. That statement cuts against the assumption that streaming services are primarily hunting for automation savings. There is a tension here, and it is a productive one. The tension between cost reduction and quality enhancement means InterPositive technology will face real accountability. If it does not improve what films and shows actually look like, Netflix will have no incentive to use it.
None of this means we should be naive about risks. Efficient post-production tools do reduce costs, and lower costs do eventually affect labour demand across the supply chain. The creative community's caution is grounded in legitimate experience with technological disruption. Yet the architecture matters. Netflix highlighted the "rigor they brought to it, but also the care and even constraints as they were thinking about the jobs to be done here," with the company knowing "that it was important to honour and protect the creative intent that was involved in the story."
What emerges is a model that reasonable people across the industry might actually live with. Artists retain agency. The technology is purpose-built for specific production challenges, not designed to bypass human decision-making. And the commercial incentive runs toward better stories, not merely cheaper ones. It is not a perfect solution to the AI dilemma in creative work. But it is more honest than most corporate statements about artificial intelligence, and it acknowledges a principle that both the cultural left and right should be able to defend: that tools belong to the people who use them, not the other way around.