Ben Affleck says Animals used AI widely, but not peers' work
Ben Affleck says he used artificial intelligence across his new thriller Animals, but only under strict limits of his own making.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the film’s premiere on Thursday, Affleck said he would not use AI that trains on or learns from copyrighted work or creative intelligence made by his peers The Hollywood Reporter. He was blunt. No borrowed work.
Affleck directed, co-wrote and stars in Animals, an upcoming Netflix thriller. He plays a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped, with Kerry Washington playing his wife. It is scheduled to start streaming exclusively on Netflix on 9 October Netflix.
He first addressed the film’s use of AI on Wednesday at the 2026 edition of Bloomberg’s Screentime event The Hollywood Reporter. There, he said he had used AI for lots of things on the movie.
At the premiere, he gave more detail on how that worked. A proprietary dataset — essentially a closed library of material cleared for the production to use — was created for Animals so the AI work would not have to be extractive, he said. The tools were, in his words, a discrete set of tools. They were not about making fake people or replacing anybody.
The comments carry extra weight because of Affleck’s business history in the area. Earlier in 2026, he sold his filmmaking technology company InterPositive to Netflix for nearly $600 million. Netflix announced the acquisition in March 2026 Reuters.
What makes this stand out is the tone. Affleck is not dismissing the technology, nor is he presenting it as a substitute for cast and crew. For viewers, this means the debate around Animals next week will likely be about both the story on screen and the system used to build it.
