There’s a lot of fear and confusion surrounding artificial intelligence (A.I.) in Hollywood. There are folks who are so concerned that A.I. is going to be used by studios to pump out scripts for new films and TV shows. There are folks who worry that A.I. will replace actors. Basically, people believe A.I. is an existential threat to the industry. Ben Affleck is not one of those people.
Speaking at this year’s 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit (via Variety), Ben Affleck was asked about A.I. and how it will be received in Hollywood. The actor started by saying “movies will be one of the last things, if everything gets replaced, to be replaced by AI.” And he goes on to explain why that is.
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“AI can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan. It cannot write you Shakespeare,” Affleck explained.
Affleck also talked about what A.I. is actually good at, which is imitation. The A.I. that we have now is not capable of original thought. For those not familiar with the technology that is commonly referred to as A.I. nowadays, it’s actually more specific to call it generative A.I. This is the technology that can generate a script for an episode of TV because it has read thousands of scripts and understands the structure. The technology learns by taking in tons and tons of input from the internet and can spit out replications.
“AI is a craftsman at best,” said Affleck. “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.”
He added, “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.”
Of course, things can change with technology. The A.I. that is being used today is constantly getting better, and there is a race amongst tech folk to come up with true artificial intelligence. But it appears we’re still pretty far off from that, at this time.
So, for now, Affleck isn’t wrong. A.I. isn’t going to take down the film industry. At least not yet.
