Ellison's AI Plans for Warner Bros., Ben Affleck’s Secret AI Studio Surfaces, James Harden's AI Fail, & Study Reveals: Do Fans Want AI Music?
MAN AND ROBOTS: Weekly signals on how AI and automation are reshaping work & creativity.
MARCH 6, 2026
🎥 What the New Owner of Warner Bros. Plans For AI
1. Last week, David Ellison (son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison) and his Paramount Skydance team snatched Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) from Netflix with a higher offer that WBD’s CEO, David Zaslav, and his board of directors couldn’t refuse. This happened just as it seemed as though Netflix had sealed the deal. Now that Ellison seems to be a lock to control the vast vault of Warner Bros. IP (from Superman to Game of Thrones, to The Matrix), some are wondering what he’ll do with all those prized franchises now that AI seems poised to churn out AI-generated versions of the most famous IP in the coming years.
“Look, AI is here, and it’s going to be transformative across all aspects of the business,” Ellison told CNBC days after securing the deal. “The way that we really look at artificial intelligence is really as a tool for artists. I do not believe that AI is a replacement for human creativity. I really view it as a force multiplier for filmmakers and the creative communities to be able to realize their visions more fully, and I think it’s going to be an incredibly powerful tool for this industry.”
🎬 Hollywood’s Golden Boy Reveals His Secret AI Hand
2. Just weeks after many Hollywood insiders praised Ben Affleck for his measured thoughts on the future of AI in film and TV, some are now pushing back after discovering he quietly created an AI company in 2022, which he sold this week to Netflix. The company, InterPositive, is described as a “filmmaking technology company that develops AI-powered tools built by and for filmmakers.” InterPositive is made up of 16 researchers, engineers, and creatives. According to Affleck, the goal is to focus on using AI to develop AI filmmaking techniques, rather than to replace actors. The acquisition price was not disclosed, but it is notable due to the fact that Netflix generally prefers to develop AI solutions in-house via its Eyeline team.
What Ben Affleck says: “As a filmmaker, I could see how these models came up short. For artists to apply these tools towards telling the stories we dedicate our lives to, they need to be purpose-built to represent and protect all the qualities that make a great story: the nuances of filmmaking, the predictable — and unpredictable — challenges of production environments, the distortion of a lens or the way light shape-shifts across a scene,” said Affleck in a statement shared by Netflix. “Together with a small team of engineers, researchers, and creatives, I began filming a proprietary dataset on a controlled soundstage with all the familiarities of a full production. I wanted to build a workflow that captures what happens on a set, with vocabulary that matched the language cinematographers and directors already spoke and included the kind of consistency and controls they would expect … The results of this foundational work were deliberately smaller datasets and models focused on filmmaking techniques — rather than performances — creating tools that artists can use, control, and benefit from.”
