Netflix's $587M AI Bet Stumbles in Ben Affleck's 'Animals' — Glitchy Sequences Go Viral

Netflix's first major test of its $587 million acquisition of InterPositive — the AI filmmaking company co-founded by Ben Affleck — has not gone according to plan. In Affleck's new thriller "Animals," an AI-generated sequence in which a bound child flies impossibly through the air into Affleck's arms has gone viral for all the wrong reasons, drawing widespread comparisons to a notoriously absurd scene from the 1988 film "Mac & Me." Affleck publicly acknowledged using AI across the production — primarily in post — but declined to specify which sequences relied on it.

The blunder is compounding scrutiny of the InterPositive deal struck earlier this year, in which Netflix also brought Affleck on as a senior advisor. The company had positioned the acquisition as a way to help filmmakers fill in backgrounds, adjust lighting, and accelerate post-production workflows. But visible AI artifacts — including a misspelled billboard on the Sunset Strip reading "Parasise" instead of "Paradise" — suggest quality control fell short. The episode raises pointed questions about whether the technology, at its current maturity, is ready for high-profile narrative features.