Ben Affleck Dismisses Fears Of AI‑Made Movies And “Actors” Like Tilly Norwood As “Bulls–t”
It’s a familiar sci‑fi anxiety: from The Terminator and The Matrix to I, Robot, the machines rise and take over. Could it happen? Or, more realistically, could artificial intelligence push people -especially artists – out of work? Possibly, though not everyone buys the hype.
During an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience with longtime collaborator Matt Damon, Ben Affleck cut through the noise with a blunt, sobering take. While the industry swings between panic and techno‑optimism, Affleck argued that the truth about AI is far less dramatic than either camp suggests.
Affleck said (via MovieWeb) that he and his team have been studying the technology closely, comparing its long‑term impact to the early adoption of electricity. “We’ve been spending time looking at this,” he told Rogan. “My belief is it’s sort of like, ‘What’s going to happen with electricity?’ Well, a lot of [sh–’s] going to happen… some good, some that changes stuff.”
But when the conversation turned to AI writing tools, his tone sharpened. He dismissed systems like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini as fundamentally incapable of producing meaningful creative work. “You try to get ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini to write you something – it’s really [sh–y],” he said. “By its nature, it goes to the mean, to the average, and it’s not reliable.”
Claims that AI will soon generate entire films – a favorite talking point among tech evangelists – prompted an even stronger reaction. “I don’t think it’s going to be able to write anything meaningful,” Affleck said, “and in particular that it’s going to be making movies from whole cloth, like Tilly Norwood – that’s [bulls–t].”
He also pushed back on the idea that AI poses an existential threat to creative labor. “We have this sense of existential dread that it’s gonna wipe everything out,” he said. “But that runs counter to what history seems to show… a lot of that rhetoric comes from people trying to justify valuations around companies.”
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His comments land at a moment when Hollywood is still trying to define what AI actually is to the industry – a tool, a threat, a cost‑cutting device, or just a marketing pitch. Affleck’s stance suggests much of the discourse is inflated, driven more by financial incentives than technological reality.
His skepticism echoes concerns from other industry veterans. Morgan Freeman, speaking separately about AI‑generated “performers” like Tilly Norwood, pointed to the core issue with replacing human actors.
“Nobody likes her because she’s not real, and that takes the part of a real person,” Freeman said. “It’s not going to work out very well in movies or television. The union’s job is to keep actors acting, so there’s going to be that conflict.”
Together, their remarks highlight the same tension: AI may be a powerful tool, but the push to treat it as a creative substitute is already colliding with the realities of craft, labor, and what audiences actually want.
NEXT: ‘The Dark Knight’ Trilogy Stars Michael Caine And Morgan Freeman Take Polar Opposite Stances On AI
