Hollywood actor Ben Affleck has played down fears that artificial intelligence (AI) will upend the film industry, arguing that the technology is more likely to function as a cost-saving production tool than a replacement for human creativity.
Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Affleck said AI will primarily be used to streamline parts of filmmaking that are costly or logistically difficult, rather than generating entire movies on its own.
He dismissed concerns that AI will soon be capable of producing meaningful scripts or fully autonomous films.
“I actually don't think it's very likely that it can — it's going to be able to write anything meaningful or and, in particular, that it's going to be making movies from whole cloth like Tilly Norwood, like that's bulls---. I don't think that's going to happen,” Affleck said.
Tilly Norwood is an entirely AI-generated virtual actress created in 2025 by Particle6, a company founded by Eline van der Velden. The announcement of the virtual actress went viral and sparked debate across Hollywood about whether AI could eventually replace human performers.
Affleck argued that the technology is not advancing in the way some fear and said it should be viewed similarly to existing tools such as visual effects.
“I think it actually turns out the technology is not progressing in exactly the same way they sort of presented it,” he said. “And really what it is going to be is a tool just like sort of visual effects and, yeah, it needs to have language around it”.
He also addressed concerns about actors’ rights, emphasizing that legal protections around name, image, and likeness already exist.
“I can't sell your f*****g picture for money. I can't. You can sue me. Period. I might have the ability to draw you to make you in a very realistic way, but that's already against the law,” Affleck said, adding that industry unions and guilds are likely to further regulate AI use.
According to Affleck, one of the most practical applications of AI in filmmaking would be recreating difficult or remote locations, reducing costs without eliminating jobs.
“For example, we don't have to go to the North Pole, right? We can shoot the scene here in our parkas, and you know whatever it is, but then make it appear very realistically as if we're in the North Pole,” he said. “It’ll save us a lot of money, a lot of time. We're going to focus on the performances and not be freezing our a-- off out there and running back inside.”
Affleck said much of the anxiety around AI stems from what he described as a broader human fear of transformative technologies.
“It kind of feels to me like … there's a lot more fear because we have the sense of this existential dread. ‘It’s going to wipe everything out’. But that actually runs counter, in my view, to what history seems to show, which is adoption is slow. It's incremental,” he said.
He also criticised what he described as exaggerated claims from technology companies promoting AI.
“I think a lot of that rhetoric comes from people who are trying to justify valuations around companies where they go, ‘We’re going to change everything in two years. There's going to be no more work’,” Affleck said.
He pointed to rising costs and diminishing performance gains in newer AI models as evidence that the technology may be reaching a plateau.
“The reason they’re saying that is because they need to ascribe a valuation for investment that can warrant the CapEx spend they're going to make on these data centers,” he said, adding that newer models deliver more modest improvements at significantly higher energy and infrastructure costs.