Ben Affleck Says Movies ‘Will Be One of the Last Things Replaced by AI,’ and Even That’s Unlikely to Happen: ‘AI Is a Craftsman at Best’

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Ben Affleck is not worried about AI taking over Hollywood. Speaking to “Squawk on the Street” co-anchor David Faber during a recent interview at this month’s 2024 CNBC Delivering Alpha investor summit, Affleck declared that “movies will be one of the last things, if everything gets replaced, to be replaced by AI.” “AI can write you excellent imitative verse that sounds Elizabethan.

It cannot write you Shakespeare,” Affleck explained after Faber asked if AI is a benefit or a threat to Hollywood creatives. “The function of having two actors or three or four actors in a room and the taste to discern and construct… that is something that currently entirely alludes AI’s capability and I think will for a meaningful period of time,” Affleck said. “What AI is going to do is dis-intermediate the more laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking that will allow costs to be brought down, that will lower the barrier to entry, that will allow more voices to be heard, that will make it easier for the people want to make ‘Good Will Huntings’ to go out and make it.” Affleck explained that “AI is a craftsman at best.

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.” “Craftsman is knowing how to work.