After rejecting Warner Bros deal, Netflix acquires Ben Affleck's AI startup: Here’s what the company does

Netflix has acquired InterPositive, an AI startup founded by Hollywood actor Ben Affleck. The streaming giant’s latest acquisition comes shortly after stepping away from a potential deal involving Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The acquisition brings InterPositive’s 16-member team of engineers, researchers, and creatives into Netflix, while Affleck will join the company as a senior adviser to provide ongoing guidance. However, the terms of the deal were not disclosed.The purchase comes days after Netflix exited its bid to acquire WBD studios and streaming businesses. The company chose not to submit a counteroffer after Paramount Skydance increased its hostile bid for WBD by $1 per share, thereby raising the offer to $31 per share.InterPositive develops AI-powered tools designed to support filmmaking. Netflix said the technology offers capabilities that “keep filmmakers at the centre of the process.” According to a Variety report, the company plans to provide its creative partners with access to the tools and does not currently intend to sell the technology commercially. In a video that Netflix shared with the acquisition announcement, Affleck said InterPositive does not generate AI video from scratch. He said, “It's not about text-prompting or generating something from nothing. 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.”Instead, the system builds an AI model from an existing production's dailies, which a filmmaker can then bring into post-production to mix and colour, relight shots, and add visual effects.Affleck founded the Los Angeles-based company in 2022 after observing the early stages of AI's development in film production. He added, “As a filmmaker, I could see how these models came up short. For artists to apply these tools towards telling the stories we dedicate our lives to, they need to be purpose-built to represent and protect all the qualities that make a great story: the nuances of filmmaking, the predictable — and unpredictable — challenges of production environments, the distortion of a lens or the way light shape-shifts across a scene.”InterPositive built its first AI model using footage filmed on a controlled soundstage and trained it to understand "visual logic and editorial consistency" while accounting for real-world production challenges such as missing shots, background replacements, and incorrect lighting."We also built in restraints to protect creative intent, so the tools are designed for responsible exploration while keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists — and ensuring that the benefits of this technology flow directly back to the story they're trying to tell," Affleck noted.Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria said the technology will give creative partners “more choices, more control and more protection for their vision”.Meanwhile, Netflix’s chief product and technology officer, Elizabeth Stone, said the tools are designed to help filmmakers produce higher-quality content and not to make films faster or cheaper.“The InterPositive team is joining Netflix because of our shared belief that innovation should empower storytellers, not replace them,” Stone added.