I previously wrote about Hollywood’s VFX crisis and the troubling way AI disruption is often framed: some creative workers are treated as replaceable, while others are assured they are protected.

That is why Ben Affleck’s comments about AI have stayed with me.

In a 2024 interview, Affleck discussed the future of AI in filmmaking and argued that actors, writers, and directors occupy a fundamentally different category from other creative workers. According to Affleck, AI may reduce costs and automate certain aspects of filmmaking, but the core elements of human creativity; taste, judgment, collaboration, and performance, will remain beyond AI’s reach.

Affleck argued that AI would primarily affect the “more laborious, less creative, and more costly aspects of filmmaking.” He suggested that reducing those costs could lower barriers to entry and allow more people to make films. At first glance, that argument sounds appealing. Technology has often lowered production costs and expanded access to creative tools.

But there is a question that deserves more attention: What happens when the work being reduced is also the work that trains the next generation of creative professionals?

Who Exactly Are the “Actors” Being Protected?

Affleck’s comments about actors raise an important question: which “actors” is he actually referring to?

When people discuss protecting actors from AI, the conversation often centers on established performers; the people whose names appear above the title. Those performers are valuable precisely because they have already climbed the ladder. But the majority of actors are not household names. They are background performers, day players, supporting actors, and emerging performers trying to obtain the experience that allows a career to develop.

Those smaller opportunities are not insignificant. They are the foundation of the profession. A young actor does not begin as a leading performer. They learn through smaller roles, auditions, rehearsals, and the experience of working alongside others. If AI reduces demand for those early opportunities, the concern is not only about today’s jobs. It is about whether tomorrow’s successful actors will have a path to becoming successful in the first place. A profession can only survive as long as there is still a ladder for people to climb.

The Problem With Treating VFX as “Less Creative”

Affleck specifically singled out visual effects (VFX) as an area likely to experience significant disruption, stating that he would not want to be in the VFX business because AI, in his estimation, is poised to slash the cost of VFX, and its human workforce along with it.

This raises another question: What exactly do we mean when we say “VFX”? To the general audience, visual effects may sound like a single technical category. But those impressive, polished images do not go from initial concept to final form in a single step. Rather, VFX is a collection of creative disciplines involving multiple artists, supervisors, and specialists working together to solve complex visual storytelling problems, often assisting the director in searching for the best solution.

A production pipeline must maintain consistency across hundreds or thousands of frames. Artists must respond to director and supervisor feedback, make controlled revisions, preserve continuity, and ensure that every shot supports the story being told.

The challenge lies not only in generating the final image we see projected in the theater, but in the process of managing thousands of creative decisions along the way. Simply characterizing VFX as a bothersome but necessary production cost risks artificially minimizing the substantial, often crucial artistic judgement and value that VFX contributes to the filmmaking process. The people creating digital environments, creatures, simulations, and effects are not simply operating tools and pushing buttons. They are contributing innumerable creative decisions within the larger vision of a film.

The InterPositive Question

More recent reporting provides additional context surrounding Affleck’s comments. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, InterPositive, the AI company Affleck founded in 2022 and later sold to Netflix for approximately $587 million, was created with “a particular emphasis on upending visual effects without impacting the creative part of filmmaking, from writing and directing to acting and production design.”

According to reporting on Affleck’s patent application, the technology is designed in part to reduce below-the-line production costs; precisely the category that includes many of the workers who have historically relied on those jobs as a pathway into the industry.

Viewed in hindsight, Affleck’s 2024 interview takes on a different significance. When he discussed AI’s impact on VFX in 2024, we now know that he was not only speaking as an eminent actor and filmmaker observing a technological shift. He had, in fact, already founded a company developing technology aimed at disrupting this very sector while simultaneously arguing in favor of protections for a select group, including Affleck and his peers. Whether readers view that as a conflict of interest or simply important missing context, it is relevant information when considering his earlier comments.

The issue is not that someone involved in filmmaking should not discuss the very technology that impacts the future of their craft. Quite the opposite. People with experience in the industry have valuable perspectives. The issue is that public conversations about AI often divide filmmaking into two purported categories: the creative people (Artists with a capital “A,” like Affleck) whose work is to be protected, and the largely anonymous production workers whose contributions are treated as a line-item cost to be reduced or, preferably, eliminated. A categorization that is too simplistic.

Efficiency Does Not Automatically Preserve an Industry

The argument for AI in Hollywood is often premised on cost efficiency. If technology reduces costs, studios can theoretically create more content, expand opportunities, and make filmmaking more accessible. But cost reduction alone does not answer the question of who bears the consequences.

A film industry is not built only by stars and directors. It relies on thousands of people developing and honing specialized skills over years. A junior artist becomes a senior artist through experience. A background performer gains experience that may lead to greater opportunities. An assistant learns the craft by working alongside seasoned pros who have already mastered it. Those entry points are the foundation of the industry.

If AI removes too many of those early opportunities, the damage may not be immediately visible. The industry may coast along on momentum, continuing to produce successful films in the short term, while quietly weakening the pipeline that creates future talent.

Missing Rungs

The concern with AI is not simply that some tasks may become automated. Every technological change alters the way industries operate. The deeper concern is what happens when an industry removes the entry-level opportunities through which people learn and progress.

Hollywood has always relied on a creative ecosystem. That ecosystem depends on experience, mentorship, and opportunity. If AI reduces the need for junior VFX artists, background performers, and other early-career roles, the bottom rungs of the ladder begin to disappear. And when the bottom rungs disappear, there is effectively no ladder left.

SAG-AFTRA has negotiated protections around digital replicas and synthetic performers that address important questions of consent and compensation. Those protections are necessary. But protecting the value of an established performer’s likeness is not the same as protecting the pathway that allows a performer to become valuable in the first place. No contract can manufacture experience that no longer exists.

Hollywood will continue searching for cost efficiencies. That is not new. The question is whether those efficiencies will strengthen the creative ecosystem, or slowly dismantle the very pathways that create the professionals who make it viable.

A profession is not protected simply because its most successful members remain valuable. A profession endures because new people still have a ladder to climb.