Ben Affleck isn’t worried about AI taking over Hollywood. Speaking with “Squawk on the Street” co-anchor David Faber in a recent interview at the 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha Investor Summit taking place this month, Affleck said, “Even if everything is replaced, the movie will be It will be one of the last things to be replaced.” ”
“AI can write great copycat poetry that sounds Elizabethan. It can’t write Shakespeare,” Affleck explained after Faber asked if AI was an advantage or a threat to Hollywood creatives.
“The ability to have two actors in a room, or even three or four actors, and the sense of identifying and building that… that’s completely implicit in the capabilities of AI at this point. , I think that will be the case for any meaningful period of time,” Affleck said. “What AI is trying to do is disintermediate the more labor-intensive, less creative, more costly aspects of filmmaking, which will reduce costs, lower barriers to entry, and allow more That way, people who want to make Good Will Hunting will be able to do so more easily.”
Affleck explained: “AI is, at best, a craftsman. A craftsman can learn how to make Stickley furniture by sitting next to someone and watching and copying their techniques. This is the basic mechanism of language models. They are just cross-pollinating what already exists. Nothing new is being created.”
“A craftsman knows how to do a job. The art is knowing when to stop. And knowing when to stop is something that is very difficult for an AI to learn because it’s a preference. I think so,” Affleck continued. “There’s also a lack of consistency, a lack of control, a lack of quality.”
Affleck cited HBO’s “Succession” as an example of AI’s creative limits, saying that the only new episodes the series could create using AI would simply be rehashings of older episodes that AI technology could pull from. pointed out.
“With AI, you’ll be able to request your own episode of ‘Succession.’ ‘I’ll pay you $30 and I’ll make you a 45-minute episode where Kendall takes over a company, runs off, and has an affair.’ Can you give it to me?” With stewie? That’s going to work out,” Affleck said. “And while it’s a little junky and a little weird, it recognizes the cheeky parts and the actors and remixes it effectively. That’s the long-term value.”
But can AI create a new series like Succession from scratch? According to Affleck, that’s highly unlikely.
