Netflix has acquired InterPositive, the AI film-technology startup founded by actor and director Ben Affleck, for approximately $587 million in cash, the company announced.
Affleck founded InterPositive in 2022 and ran it in stealth with a team of engineers, researchers, and creatives. Under the deal, the full team joins Netflix, with Affleck taking on a senior advisor role.
What InterPositive built is distinct from the generative-AI tools dominating headlines. The startup filmed a proprietary dataset on a controlled soundstage, using the vocabulary of working cinematographers and directors, to train models that understand visual logic, editorial consistency, and cinematic rules.
The tools then train on a given production’s own dailies to assist with post-production work: reframing shots, relighting incorrectly exposed scenes, removing wires from stunt performers, fixing continuity issues, and streamlining color workflows.
“In 2022, I spent a lot of time observing the early rise of AI in production,” Affleck said in the blog post announcing the news. “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.”
“We also need to preserve what makes storytelling human, which is judgment,” Affleck continued. “The kind that takes decades to build, experience to hone and that only people can have. I knew I had a responsibility to my peers and our industry, to protect the power of human creativity and the people behind it. In creating InterPositive, I sought to do just that.”
Netflix plans to make the technology available to its creative partners rather than selling it commercially; Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria has framed it as expanding, not replacing, creative freedom.
The acquisition lands as Hollywood’s AI arms race accelerates: Netflix said in its second-quarter earnings call that about 300 titles in its library used generative AI while Amazon rolled out its AI Studios division within MGM in February. Labor unions remain skeptical, raising concerns about displacement and compensation for training data.
Affleck’s new Netflix thriller “Animals” – starring Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun, and Gillian Anderson – was made using InterPositive’s tools. It premieres Oct. 9.