Ben Affleck says he used AI "for lots of things" in Netflix's Animals

Affleck's disclosure connects two threads that run through the story. One is the film itself: Animals, co-written by Affleck, Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray, puts him on screen as Los Angeles mayoral candidate Mark Kimball, whose son is kidnapped, leaving him and wife Abigail (Kerry Washington) a few hours to come up with the ransom money. The other is Affleck's business history with the same platform releasing the film — he quietly founded the AI firm InterPositive in 2022 and served as CEO, and Netflix bought it in March for $587 million, after which he took on a senior advisor role.

That overlap is why his answers at the Q&A carry more weight than a routine promotion. He framed the AI use as deliberately unglamorous, describing Animals as "a very human movie" that is not set in space and has no visual effects, and saying the tools mainly sped up post-production. He also sidestepped specifics, comparing an explanation to a magician ruining his own trick by pointing out a second bunny and a plant in the audience.

The stakes may hinge less on what Animals reveals on screen than on whether Affleck eventually says what the AI actually did behind it. For him the hesitation is tied to protecting the "illusion of reality" his business sells; for the post-production specialists who would carry out similar work, a concrete account from a director of his profile could shape how openly those tools get discussed. That remains unresolved as long as he holds back the details.