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Actor Ben Affleck has dismissed fears surrounding the impact of artificial intelligence on the film industry, saying the technology will be used as a “tool” to slow down the workflow “in all the expensive and burdensome areas” of manual production, rather than creating perfect films.
During the appearance it is open “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Affleck discussed how he believes AI will change film production, underestimate anxiety some Hollywood figures have revealed about the technology.
“Actually I don’t think it’s very likely that he won’t be able to – he’ll be able to write anything meaningful or, especially, that he’ll be making movies out of whole cloth like Tilly Norwood, like those bulls —. I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he asserted.
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Ben Affleck appears on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ on Jan. 5, 2026, Los Angeles, California. (PG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Photos)
Tilly Norwood, voiced by Affleck, is a fully AI-generated virtual character created by Eline van der Velden’s company, Particle6, in 2025. The virtual character went viral after it was announced, sparking a debate in the film industry about the role of AI in replacing humans.
Instead of using AI to replace human roles and creativity, the actor argued that, despite what many believe, technology has not reached that level yet.
“I think it has become clear that technology is not progressing in the same way that they have been saying,” he said. “And what is actually going to be a tool like a kind of visual effects and, of course, it needs to have a language around it.”
Affleck added that while “you still need to protect your name and your likeness,” there are different methods and laws that already exist to protect actors and actresses from being used without their consent.
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“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 it to make it realistic, but that’s already against the law,” he noted, adding that unions and organizations will eventually step in to regulate the use of AI.
According to Affleck, another possible use of AI, which wouldn’t come at the expense of human labor, would be using the technology to simulate hard-to-reach areas that often drive production costs through the roof.
Various AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are displayed on the smartphone screen. (Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“For example, we don’t have to go to the North Pole, right? We can shoot a scene here in our parks, and you know what it is, but then make it look as real as if we were at the North Pole,” he explained. “It’s going to save you a lot of money, a lot of time. We’re going to focus on the play and not put the ia– our going out and going back in.”
The actor said the fear surrounding AI may be due to the human feeling of “existential fear” associated with the emergence of powerful tools that have the potential to change the world as we know it.
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“It seems to me … there’s a lot of fear because we have this sense of fear that exists. ‘It’s going to erase everything.’ But that’s actually the opposite, in my opinion, of what history seems to show, which is that adoption is slow. It’s growing,” he argued.
Aside from the human element of fear of the unknown, Affleck also said that much of the “talk” about AI changing the world comes from companies that build and use the technology in an effort to measure the value of their investment.
Affleck believes that AI will help filmmakers create projects more successfully. (Marilla Sicilia)
“I think a lot of that talk comes from people trying to justify scaling up companies where they go, ‘We’re going to change everything in two years. There won’t be any more jobs,'” he argued.
“The reason they’re saying that is because they need to determine the amount of investment that would justify the CapEx they’re going to spend on these data centers arguing, ‘Oh, you know as soon as we do the next model, it’s going to be up to three times as good,’ except actually, ChatGPT 5 – about 25% better than Chat and four times the data with GPT. That’s like a plateau.
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