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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience last week to promote their new film The Rip. The three of them discuss many aspects of filmmaking in today’s modern world with respect to audience retention and more.
I’d like to focus on what Ben Affleck had to say about AI’s impact on the film industry. He makes solid points — let’s partake in the conversation.
Here’s A Quick Look At What We’ll Delve Into:
- What the WGA strikes were all about.
- Why the Writer’s demands about AI in the film industry were important.
- How Batman views AI.
- What the benefits and downfalls of AI in the film industry are.
The Strikes
The topic of AI arose when the host asked the duo about their take on the recent strikes. In 2023, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) writers went on strike over many things. Such as streaming, rates, residuals, and minimums to name a few.
They also went on strike due to demands on AI, as did the actors with the SAG-AFTRA strike. There were a lot of demands. All of them can be found in the sources referenced at the end of this article.
The writers stood with the actors. The actors stood with the writers. Who did AI stand with?
Demands were made because it was clear that human written scripts would always be superior to AI generated scripts.
The Demands
Let’s look at some of the demands by the WGA.
2023 MBA Provision:
- Neither traditional AI nor generative AI is a writer, so no written material produced by traditional AI or GAI can be considered literary material.
- A company cannot give you an AI-generated screenplay and pay you a rewrite fee.
- A company cannot require the writer to use AI software when performing their writing services.
- A company must disclose to the writer if any materials given to the writer have been generated by AI.
These demands were fair by all measures. There was negotiation, but demands were met. AI was not going to win this battle.
It’s an incredible win that material written by AI cannot be considered literary work akin to human work. Being given a screenplay “written” by AI should not count as an original work for a rewriter. Their “rewrite” IS the original work.
If a writer chooses to use AI to assist in their writing, they should be able to do so within reason. However, no writer should EVER be told that they MUST use AI. Transparency on reference materials given to a writer is incredibly important too — you should know if it was AI generated.
The Batfleck
Ben Affleck first appeared as Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, fighting for what he believed in. Fast forward almost a decade and he’s still fighting for what he believes in. As an actor, writer and director, Affleck has the background to speak on AI in the film industry.
Affleck compares AI to electricity, pointing out how it can be used for good as well as for bad. “If you try to get ChatGPT…to write you something, it’s really shitty” is his take on chatbot writing. I agree with him.
He points out how “it’s shitty because by it’s nature it goes to the mean, the average.” While it can be a useful tool, you shouldn’t rely on it to write anything “meaningful.” It’s important to take note of this because without meaning, it cannot be consequential.
You want your writing to have consequence, you want it to have an impact on the reader. There is writing for eduction, writing for entertainment, and writing for evaluation. You may want to write a piece for a textbook, a page for a comic, or a dissertation.
No matter what you write, it should have weight behind it. An LLM chatbot can’t add weight and depth, only weakness and disease. The moment you copy and paste that generated text, you infect what you created.
The Movies
I have a great interest in movies. I own over a thousand Blu-rays/DVDs, over 100 of which are Steelbooks (yes, it’s admittedly too many). What I’m saying is I LOVE movies.
That’s why I think it’s critical to acknowledge the up sides of AI for making movies. As Affleck points out, it can help with a scene taking place in the North Pole. Instead of the actors and crew being distracted by freezing their a** off, they can focus solely on the film.
How? By using AI to render the background and setting accordingly to the director and producer’s specifications and needs.
AI can be useful for a lot more than background and setting in film. For example, AI was used for Dune: Part Two to make blue eyes, and for Rook’s deepfake in Alien: Romulus. It’s not perfect yet (cough cough Thor: Love and Thunder), but it’s getting there, and it is useful.
Personally, I prefer Christopher Nolan’s on location approach to filmmaking, but not everyone has his pull on the studios. Some studios focus on quantity over quality, and that’s where poor use of AI comes in.
Let’s face it…
Writers went on strike with demands related to AI because they care about job security and protecting their art. Batman is right when he says that a chatbot is only going to produce shitty scripts.
By their very nature, they can’t take artistic risk. AI can be used effectively for robots, but it can also go terribly wrong for superheroes.
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